
Class J.Xt V 
Book.. . » A ^. 




Photograph by Ai.inari, Florence 

Santa Maria dei.la Tosse, by Matteo Civitali 

Frontis/iicce 




IN TUSCANY 



IN TUSCA NY 



TUSCAN TOWNS, TUSCAN TYPES 
AND THE TUSCAN TONGUE 



BY 



MONTGOMERY CARMICHAEL 




THIRD EDITION 



NEW YORK 

E. P. DUTTON & CO. 

1902 



' ' Car a e beata e benedetta Toscana, patria 
d'ogni elegan^a e d'ogni gentil costume, e 
sede eterna di civilta." — Leopardi 






TO 



cMY SISTER cMARY 



THE WRITER OF SONGS 



PREFATORY NOTE 

This book has been written after long residence 
among the Tuscans, but no attempt has been 
made in it to describe the whole of Tuscany. 
I have endeavoured rather to illustrate some of 
the little-known but fascinating spots of that 
most fascinating country, and have attempted by 
an estimate of the Tuscan character, by nume- 
rous sketches of Tuscan types, by a disquisition 
on the spoken language, and by a description of 
the characteristic highways and byways of the 
country, to present to the reader a truthful im- 
pression of Tuscany and the Tuscans in general. 

The book has but one merit that I dare 
hazard : I have succeeded in writing of this 
chosen corner of the Earth without any men- 
tion of cities so over-written and over-run as 
Florence and Siena. The reader who knows 
Tuscany, even slightly, will be properly grateful 
for this relief. 

Of the five cities described, Leghorn, Volterra, 



viii PREFATORY NOTE 

and Portoferraio are unfamiliar to the majority of 
Englishmen, and Lucca is but little better known. 
At Pisa I have almost passed over the famous 
Duomo, Campo Santo and Leaning Tower, and 
tell instead of the camels which have been indi- 
genous there for more than two centuries, of the 
ancient mediaeval port of the Pisan Republic, of 
the Church and Order of the Knights of St. 
Stephen, and of the wonderful Madonna di sotto 
gli Organi which is locked up in the Cathedral, 
away from the eye of the passing traveller. 

The other places described are the veritable 
byways of Tuscany, and they are perhaps more 
fascinating than its highways. These chapters 
include Mount La Verna, where St. Francis in 
1224 received the Stigmata, and where there is 
to-day a flourishing convent of the Friars Minor ; 
Camaldoli, with its monastery and hermitage, 
and its great hotel, now a favourite summer 
resort of the Tuscans ; Montecatini, the gay 
inland watering-place, the Tunbridge of Tuscany; 
and the old State of the Spanish Praesidia in the 
Province of Grosseto, with its wonderful Spanish 
fortresses and keeps. 

The Italian national game of "Pallone" is 



PREFATORY NOTE ix 

fully dealt with, and the book closes with an 
account of the mysteries of the Italian State 
Lottery, how people may win in it and how lose, 
what the State -makes out of it, and to what 
extent it is patronised by the people. 

The illustrations I have chosen are for the 
most part representations of little-known views 
and works of art. The Coats of Arms of Cities 
and Religious Orders are the work of Mr. 
Michael Carr. 

Some of the chapters of this book have already 
appeared in the form of Magazine and Review 
articles : and I beg to express my thanks to the 
proprietors of Temple Bar, the Saturday Review, 
the National Observer, the Pall Mall Magazine, 
Pearsons Monthly, and St. Peters Magazine for 
the courteous permission they have kindly ac- 
corded me to make use of subject-matter which 
had first seen the light in their pages. 

M. C. 

Livorno la Car A : December 31, 1900. 



CONTENTS 



PREFATORY NOTE 



PACK 

vii 



THE TUSCAN TEMPERAMENT. 

Its complexities — Its excellencies — The Tuscans great 
sticklers for the outward decencies — Tuscan atti- 
tude to the foreigner — Fascination of Tuscany for 
the Englishman — Tuscan good manners and cour- 
tesy — The Tuscans politically — The Tuscans re- 
ligiously — The conclusion of the whole matter. 



TUSCAN TYPES 



I. 


Fra Pacifico . 


II. 


My Unpaid Factotum 


III. 


My Cook . 


IV. 


My Serving-Man 


V. 


My Gardener . 


VI. 


My Vetturino 


VII. 


The Poor Idiot 



VIII. The Very Rev. Canon Domenico Pucci 8 



i7 

19 

33 
39 
49 
58 
66 

74 

1 



THE TUSCAN TONGUE 

Difficulties of the Tuscan tongue — Is a dialect, and not 
the Italian language — Why it ranks as a language 
— Diversity of the Italian dialects — Infinity of the 
Italian vernacoli — The question of accent — The 
charm of the language — Modes of address — The 



95 



xii CONTENTS 

PAGE 

use of suffixes and their signification — A beginner's 
struggles — Tuscan prose — Influence of the Acca- 
demia della Crusca — " Pazienza ! " 

TUSCAN TOWNS 119 

I. Leghorn . . . . . . . .121 

Little visited by foreigners — Its origin — Its cosmo- 
politan characteristics — Its churches — The British 
factory — The British cemetery — Smollett's burial- 
place — The English Church — Shelley's villa — The 
Four Moors — The port — Sea-bathing — The Naval 
Academy — Trade and industries — Our Lady of 
Montenero — Cara Livorno ! 

II. Lucca 144 

Origin and history — Its splendid Archivio di Stato — 
The approach to Lucca — The Albergo dell' Uni- 
verso — Mr. Ruskin at Lucca — The walls of the 
city — Its churches : the Duomo, San Michele, San 
Frediano — The Volto Santo — Matteo Civitali and 
his works — Character of the Lucchesi — Their 
highest eulogy : nirgends Philistergesichter. 

III. Pisa 161 

Hurried visits of the traveller — Pisa's chiefest defect — 
Its great sights : the Lung 1 Arno, Santa Maria della 
Spina, the Duomo, the Baptistery, the Leaning 
Tower — The Madonna sotto gli Organi — The 
knights of St. Stephen — Their church and Con- 
ventual Palace — Englishmen in the Order — Excur- 
sions from Pisa : Bocca d'Arno, San Pier in Grado, 
the Certosa of Calci, the Convent of Nicosia, the 
Verruca — The camels of San Rossore — The old 
Port of the Pisan Republic. 

IV. VOLTERRA . . ... . . . . 180 

Difficult of access — A good inn — Immense antiquity of 
the city — Etruscan remains — The Etruscan Museum 
— Situation of Volterra — The convict prison — The 



CONTENTS xiii 



PAGE 



pauper asylum — The landslip of le Baize — Char- 
acter of the Volterrani — The alabaster industry — 
The rough material — Method of excavation — The 
worked industry : at Florence : at Volterra — The 
question of taste — The exquisite skill. 

V. PORTOFERRAIO AND THE ISLAND OF ELBA . 199 

Elementary geography — Means of approach — The Al- 
bergo delle Api — Old fortifications — Excursions — 
Marciana Marina — Wild flowers — Monte Capanne 
— The iron ore mines of Rio Marina — Porto Lon- 
gone — The history of Elba — Its territorial divisions 
— The rule of Napoleon I. — Napoleon's country 
house — The Demidoff Museum — Napoleon's town 
house — Offer of the islanders to Napoleon III. 
after Sedan. 

A TUSCAN SANCTUARY: Mount la Verna . 221 

How to get there — Accommodation in the convent — 
Natural peculiarities of the mountain — The dona- 
tion to St. Francis — His first visit in 121 5 — His last 
visit in 1224 — Era Leone — Brother Falcon — The 
Stigmata — St. Francis' "Addio" to La Verna — 
Proofs of the Stigmata — The Benediction of St. 
Francis — The chief sights on Mount La Verna : 
the convent, the two churches, the Loggia, the 
Chapel of the Stigmata, the della Robbias, &c. — 
The Feast of the Stigmata at La Verna : personal 
impressions — The lesson of La Verna. 

A TUSCAN SUMMER RESORT: Camaldoli . 247 

Situation — Approach — Origin of the Camaldolese Order 
— The monastery — The hermitage — The rule— The 
habit — Spoliation of the Order — Excursions and 
mountaineering — Simplicity of the country folk — A 
typical excursion : to Poggio Scali — The treggia — 
Pine-tree felling — Refreshment at the hermitage — 
View from Poggio Scali — The luncheon basket 
— Ascent of La Falterona — The Grande Albergo 
di Camaldoli— Amusements — Society — Camaldoli 
abhorred of the Philistine. 



xiv CONTENTS 



PAGE 



The Tuscan Tunbridge: Montecatini . .265 

The garden of the Garden of Italy — Mr. Ruskin's 
description of the Valley of the Nievole — The 
cure at Montecatini — The various pump-houses 
— The Terme Leopoldine — The Tettuccio — Verdi 
a regular visitor — The Rinfresco — Analysis of the 
Montecatini waters — Programme of a cure — Diet 
— The Locanda Maggiore — Dr. Pietro Grocco — 
His system of receiving patients — Excursions — 
Montecatini Alto — The Grotto of Monsummano. 

SOME TUSCAN STRONGHOLDS: The Spanish 

Praesidia 281 

Orbetello the capital — Its natural situation — Monte 
Argentario — The Lake of Orbetello — Fisheries — 
Climate and salubrity — The Manganese iron ore 
mines — Roman remains at Santa Liberata — History 
of the Spanish Praesidia — Surviving Spanish in- 
fluences — Spanish fortifications — Port'Ercole — Its 
convict establishments — Porto Santo Stefano — 
Telamone — The siege of Orbetello, 1646 — The 
Passionist Order — St. Paul of the Cross — His love 
of England— Father Dominic — The Ven. Gabriele 
dell' Addolorata — The Passionist Mother House on 
Monte Argentario — Some excusable reflections. 

A TUSCAN GAME: Pallone . . ' . . .315 

A delightful pastime — Description of the game and the 
players — Some famous players — The spectators — 
Betting — Antiquity of the game — II Diavolone — 
The game on the decline — It should be seen by all 
travellers. 

TUSCAN GAMBLING: The State Lottery. . 331 

Public drawing of the numbers — Manner of winning— 
And losing — The Lotto offices — Play after closing 
time — The odds against winning — Statistics of 
takings, winnings, and profits — Statistics of play — 
Methods of choosing numbers by dreams, striking 
events, &c. — II Libro dei Sogni — Two characteristic 
anecdotes. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Santa Maria della Tosse, by Matteo 

Civitali Lucca .... 
Arms of the Order of Friars Minor 

Leghorn Types 

Typical Scenes in Leghorn 
Arms of the City of Leghorn 

Entrance to Old British Cemetery 
Leghorn 

Leghorn from the Sea . 

The Duke of the Abruzzi, as a Boy 

Our Lady of Montenero, Leghorn 

Arms of the City of Lucca . 

Arms of the Republic of Lucca 

The Volto Santo, Lucca 

Tomb of San Romano, by Matteo Civitali 

Arms of the City of Pisa 

The Campo Santo and the Pisan Plains 
(from the Leaning Tower) 

Santa Maria sotto gli Organi, Pisa 

A Pisan Camel 

Camels, Mother and Child, at San 
Rossore . . . . . 



frontispiece 

• page 19 
to face page 48 

120 
. page 121 

to face page 124 

„ i3 2 

» 136 

» 140 

. page 144 

• ., 149 

to face page 154 

. page 161 

to face page 162 

„ 166 

176 

i7 6 



/ 



xvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Arms of the City of Volterra . . . page 180 

Porta all' Arco, Volterra . . . to face page 182 

Pope St. Linus, by Luca della Robbia, . 

Volterra „ 188 

Group of Ciuchetti in the Alabaster 

Caves, Volterra . . . . „ 192 

Arms of Elba during the Napoleonic Rule . page 199 

Bay of Portoferraio .... to face page 202 

Villa San Martino and Demidoff 

Museum, Elba " ,, 214 

Convent of La Verna . . . . „ 222 

View of Mount La Verna . . . . „ 224 

St. Francis receiving the Stigmata, from 

a Fresco by Giotto at Assisi . . „ 228 

Facsimile of the Benediction of St. 
Francis 

The Annunciation, by Luca della Robbia 

The Sasso Spicco 

Il Letto di San Francesco 

Rock of the Stigmata, La Verna . 

Arms of the Camaldolese Order . 

Castle of Poppi 

Group of Camaldolese Monks 

Bird's-eye View of the Hermitage, 
Camaldoli 

A Treggia 

Arms of Montecatini .... 



J) 


232 


>; 


236 


. page 


238 


)> 


239 


to face page 


240 


. page 


247 


to face page 


248 


)> 


250 


>) 


256 


!) 


256 


• page 


265 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



xvu 



montecatini alto .... 

The Giardino Garzoni at Collodi . 

Grotto of Monsummano (Purgatory) 

Arms of Orbetello .... 

Spanish Entrance-Gate to Orbetello 

Spanish Powder-Magazine, Orbetello 

The Bracciale and Ball . 

PaLlone Court at the Cascine, Florence to face page 320 ' 

The Scoring-Board „ page 327 • 



to face page 266 

276 

278 

. page 283 

to face page 292 y 

294 - 

. page 318 



<^ 



MAPS AND PLANS 
Island of Elba ...... to face page 199 ' 

Monte Argentario , . . . . „ 283 - 

General Map of Tuscany ... at the end 



THE TUSCAN TEMPERAMENT 



IN TUSCANY 

THE TUSCAN TEMPERAMENT 

(A Frankly Partisan Appreciation) 

"I do not profess to understand the Italians," 
says Mr. Grant Allen somewhere, 1 "they are at 
once too simple and too complex." 

And in no part of Italy are the Italians at 
once so simple and so complex as in Tuscany. 
The Tuscan is so easily taken in and so difficult 
to get round ; so meek of heart and so prone to 
wrath ; so contented and so easily stirred to 
revolt and discontent ; so rootedly old-world and 
so painfully modern ; so common-sense, yet so 
easily deceived by big words and bogus ideals; 
so enamoured of liberty, yet so patient under 
galling slavery ; so free and easy in church, yet 
so essentially devout ; so truthful, so mendacious ; 
so superstitious, so enlightened ; so honest, such 
a cheat ; so thrifty, such a spendthrift ; so re- 

1 I regret that I cannot remember where, and that I can only 
vouch for the substance, not for the verbal accuracy of the quota- 
tion. 

3 



4 THE TUSCAN TEMPERAMENT 

spectable, so disreputable — in a word, so simple 
and so complex, so good and so bad. 

The Englishman who settles in Tuscany be- 
comes conscious first of all rather of the com- 
plexities of the Tuscan character than of its 
essential simplicity. Life, so different from life 
at home, develops daily in complications and 
contrasts. The commonest people are casuists, 
metaphysicians, diplomatists, keen observers of 
human nature, instinctive judges of human charac- 
ter. Of every man they form a lively and highly- 
wrought estimate, a character sketch in all its 
details, but no man do they sum up. with such 
avidity and relish as the foreigner. He is no 
ordinary child of Adam, but a new and bizarre 
creation, needing the full exercise of their quick 
wits. Twenty times as much thought is bestowed 
upon him, for twenty times as much is expected 
of him. Woe to the luckless foreigner if the 
judgment be adverse, if he be stigmatised as 
" superbo" and "prepotente" and " egoista" and 
"poco educato" for he will lie upon a bed of 
thorns ; happy the foreigner if he gain popular 
approval, if he be "gentile" and " distinto" and 
" affabile con tutti" and a "vero gentihwmo" for 
he will lie upon a bed of roses. There is no 
limit to the small subtle discomforts — and all 
so imperceptibly, so cunningly administered — 
that the fertile wits of this people can devise 
for whoso meets its disapproval ; just as there 



CHEERY TUSCAN COURTESY 5 

is no limit to the small kindly acts — and all 
done without the shadow of ostentation or the 
desire of reward — which are showered upon him 
who has been judged with popular favour. 

It is at least some satisfaction to live in a 
country where the happiness and general com- 
fort of the sojourner depend to a great extent 
upon his merits. It puts a man on his mettle ; 
he stifles his predatory instincts ; he seeks to 
acquire by diplomacy rather than by force ; he 
aims at making a goodly show of bonhomie and 
generosity — with all, and at all times, he strives 
to put on that cheery Tuscan courtesy which 
so effectually soothes and reassures. It is much 
if you can do all this, and your success would 
be assured if all Tuscans were alike, if they 
were all but as simple as they seemed. You 
have dealings with a man of sinister Mephis- 
tophelean countenance ; you suspect him, mis- 
trust him, finally accuse him ; he proves, on 
examination, to be as upright as Aristides, and 
you confess that you are misjudging the Tuscans. 
Then you have dealings with a very fascinating 
person, open, merry of countenance, childlike in 
his bearing and speech, childlike in his ideas. 
How welcome is the sincere cheery ring of his 
voice, how invigorating the echo of his honest 
laughter! You love him, trust him, place him 
in authority ; he robs and cheats you, and once 
more you amend your estimate of the Tuscan 



6 THE TUSCAN TEMPERAMENT 

temperament. And all this while, be it remem- 
bered, the unlucky foreigner is striving to acquire 
a tongue as difficult and complex, as rich in con- 
trasts and perplexities, as the Tuscan tempera- 
ment itself, the want of which leaves him the 
poor plaything of the meanest hind in his ser- 
vice, the perfect acquisition of which makes him, 
if he be Saxon, Teuton, or Scandinavian, no real 
match for a race of born probabilists. 

It is easy to pick holes in the Tuscan charac- 
ter ; it is pleasanter far, if far more difficult, to 
speak of its many surpassing excellencies. The 
foreigner — if he shall have proved himself to be 
unobjectionable — finds, to his astonishment, that 
the Tuscans are like people as he thought people 
were when he was a child, like people as the big 
masters of fiction paint them, with much heart, 
constant consideration for others, great delicacy 
of sentiment, and an ample measure of the 
bowels of compassion. The old servant of fiction, 
for instance, still lives in Tuscany — the man who 
seems to be o-ettino- no wage for he is a member 
of the family, who seeks no advantage, no rest, 
no recompense, who utters no complaint except 
to accuse himself of imperfect service. And the 
beggar of fiction survives — the creature to whom 
it is pleasant and fitting to give, and so does the 
giver of fiction who weighs not merits in any 
nicely -adjusted balance. Here, too, are the 
monks and nuns and men-at-arms of chivalrous 



A FOREIGNER'S FIRST YEAR 7 

fiction in whom we find no guile. There are 
still Brothers Cheeryble among Tuscan mer- 
chants, Uncle Tobys among Tuscan pensioners, 
Monseigneur Myricls in the Tuscan Episcopate, 
all capable of romantic leaps in the dark ; and 
among the rejected and despised of the world, 
unsuspected, undiscovered, in the slums, in pea- 
sant hovels, in unknown, unsung monasteries and 
convents, the rare figure of the old-time Saint, 
living in the atmosphere and dying in the odour 
of sanctity. 

It is all very charming when you come to know 
it, but it takes a deal of knowing, and in the 
course of coming to know a thousand disenchant- 
ments lower upon the path. The foreigner's first 
year — as likely as not through his own fault — is 
almost certain to be passed in discomfort and 
disquiet. He comes there prejudiced to begin 
with ; he vaunts his prejudices, or has no care 
to conceal them ; popular opinion condemns him, 
and then the process of slow torture begins. 
The Englishman, in everyday life, is ordinarily 
very passive towards people. He should know 
that this people require to be actively managed, 
that their interest in him is profound, that their 
eyes are upon him taking his every measure- 
ment, that his conduct and manners are being 
ruthlessly overhauled, and that his judges are 
great sticklers for externals. A certain Royal 
Highness, one of the most exalted princesses of 



8 THE TUSCAN TEMPERAMENT 

Europe, once came among them travelling in 
transparent incognito. She descended from her 
yacht and drove through the little town out into 
the wild free country. And here she was seen 
by a handful of peasants to descend from her 
carriage and to run, if not to skip, nay, there 
was one who said that she had even jumped ! 
Conduct so light and unbecoming a Royal Prin- 
cess immediately became the talk of this com- 
mune of four thousand peasants. There were 
but two opinions — that of the contemptuous 
minority that she was no real Princess ; that of 
the offended majority, that by this levity of de- 
meanour she had meant to convey that they, 
the people, were too uncivilised to call for the 
decorum expected of Royalty. Poor dear lady, 
out for a holiday jaunt in the Wilds of Tuscany, 
free for once to cast off the tedium of Royal 
state, little did she dream that critical eyes were 
upon her expecting perfection and finding only 
grave imperfection, that she was among peasants 
who in many respects require for themselves 
all the ceremony due to the weary denizens of 
courts ! 

I sometimes doubt if Tuscan professions of 
love for the foreigner can really be genuine. 
How would it be possible, one may well ask, for 
the Tuscan to love appetitively a Norseman, a 
Hollander, or a Pomeranian ? But professions 
of affection are most profuse where the English- 



PROFESSIONS OF AFFECTION 9 

man is concerned, even though we may doubt 
whether such professions do not spring — at least 
in the first instance — rather from a sense of duty 
and gratitude than from pure inclination. For 
in some dim way the Tuscan believes that 
Englishmen contributed vitally to that Union 
of Italy which he believes, still more dimly, has 
in some way contributed to his good. Then the 
Englishman is rich, he is dense and unsuspect- 
ing, often he is good-natured, usually he is mad 
enough to pay more than is due, and he is a 
member of that race which, in deference to the 
greatness of Italy, has joined the quadruple 
alliance against the proud and hated French. 
Certainly the Tuscan has some real love of 
the Englishman. He finds him defective in 
manners, a trifle overbearing and a trifle par- 
venu, too credulous of the upper classes and too 
sceptic of the lower, deficient in the right hand- 
ling of delicate questions of conduct, unable to 
appreciate at their due value the myriad grada- 
tions of right and wrong. The Tuscans are 
proud : Italy led the world when England was 
a second-class power, Italy was mistress of all 
arts, the capital of Italy was ever the capital of 
the world. Tuscans descend from Etruscans 
and Romans, English from savage hordes on the 
Baltic. And Italy sent Christianity to England. 
Decidedly the Tuscan thinks himself superior to 
the Englishman in a degree that quite outdoes 



io THE TUSCAN TEMPERAMENT 

the Englishman's belief in his superiority to the 
Tuscan, and, moreover, he measures with an 
entirely different measure. But, as I said, the 
Tuscan has certainly some real affection for the 
Englishman ; he loves his honesty, he admires 
his generosity, he reveres his pluck, he gapes in 
wonder at his plain dealing, and when he comes 
across his ideal Englishman (who as often as not 
turns out to be an Irishman) there is no limit to his 
whole-hearted enthusiastic love and admiration. 

The travelling Englishman, ignorant of its 
language, who visits a foreign country for a mere 
holiday jaunt is not in a position to judge of the 
character of its people. The travelling English- 
man's opinion of the Tuscans is usually ludicrously 
beside the mark : to him all the Latin races are 
knaves and thieves and cheats. But the resident 
Englishman usually succumbs entirely to the 
charms of the Tuscan character, and loves even 
more than he is beloved. It is surprising what 
a number of English people live permanently 
in Tuscany, not quitting it even for an annual 
holiday, but going instead, like any good Floren- 
tine, to the Tuscan mountains or the Tuscan 
seaside. An Englishman, say a retired civil 
servant, comes with his family for a stay of six 
months to "see" Florence. He arrives charged 
to the brim with captiousness, prepared not to 
submit to six months of dirt, and discomfort, and 
impossible fare, and wholesale robbery, without 



INBORN GOOD MANNERS n 

constant, aggressive, and loud-voiced protest. 
He finds instead, though the fact is slow to pene- 
trate his intelligence, willing service, cheap living, 
wholesome food, sound wine, scrupulous cleanli- 
ness, a cheery welcome, and honesty closely 
allied to honour. His doom is sealed, and though 
he does not yield without a struggle, his native 
land knows him and his daughters no more. 

It is the lower classes, the peasant class and 
even the working class of the towns, who supply 
the great charm of life in Tuscany. And this 
charm in the main proceeds from their inborn 
good manners, from that sunny, cheery courtesy 
which never seems to be mere external cere- 
mony, but springs straight from the heart itself. 
Only the other day I was striving in a network 
of slums to find a given slum. In despair I 
entered a vile enough looking drinking-shop to 
inquire my way. There were but two customers 
inside, discussing with the host a highly sweetened 
non-intoxicant syrup made from the red-currant, 
and known as Ribes. 

" Cosa comanda?" inquired mine host, which 
was as much as to say, "What may you be 
pleased to drink ? " 

I ought to have drunk something, I know ; 
decency required it of me ; but the stomach 
turns coward at the thought of sweet syrup in 
the slums. I bowed instead ceremoniously, and 
inquired the way to the Via della Rosa Bianca. 



12 THE TUSCAN TEMPERAMENT 

Mine host scratched his head and looked dis- 
tressed. " It is still far from here," he said, "and 
the street is difficult to find." He mused awhile, 
still in obvious distress, and then his face suddenly 
brightened. "Go thou, Alfredo," he said, turn- 
ing to one of his two customers, "and show this 
gentleman the way to the Via della Rosa Bianca." 

Alfredo leapt to his feet, bowed, excused him- 
self, drank off his sickly syrup, and stood ready 
to accompany me. But a troubled expression 
came across his face also. " And yet," he said 
ruminatively, " I am not certain whether the third 
to the left would bring us there, or " 

" Nay, certainly not the third to the left " 

interrupted the other tippler. 

" Then if thou knowest, go thou likewise, 
Arturo ! " cried the host, addressing his only 
other customer. 

Arturo too leapt to his feet, bowed, excused 
himself, drank off his drink, and accompanied 
by Alfredo and Arturo (sort of waterside charac- 
ters, I should think) I found my destination. 
Thus did the landlord of a low Tuscan bettola 
forcibly eject his only customers (who would 
certainly have drunk at least another siroftpo 
each) from the mere love of serving a person 
in need of help. This is the real character of 
Tuscan courtesy ; there may be much ritual, 
much smiling, bowing, throwing about of arms, 
and ceremonial phrase ; but the essence of each 



THE GREAT PROBLEM 13 

courteous act springs from that old-fashioned 
Christian charity which suffereth long and is 
kind, and which, owing to bushels of precept 
and centuries of practice, still burns cheerily in 
the land of St. Francis and St. Antoninus. 

It is perhaps scarcely fair to say anything of 
the Tuscans politically. They are new to modern 
politics, and time has as yet had no chance of 
leavening the political lump. Though they make 
a great show of being devoted to modern political 
ideas, the observer is inclined to think that the 
leaven is unsuited to such fine flour. And the 
observer cannot help regretting a little that 
aggressive modernity which, in conversation, so 
often seems to imply that Italy had no history 
to be proud of before 1859, or, at the very 
remotest, 1848. The average Italian urgently 
requires to study more dispassionately the great 
past of Italy, and needs very different preceptors 
in history from the text-books now current in 
the Peninsula. To reconcile past and present : 
that is the great problem, on the solution of 
which depends the future happiness of the coun- 
try ; the solution is hindered and not advanced 
by ignoring and maltreating the past. 

It is perhaps a curious circumstance, and cer- 
tainly an interesting fact politically, that although 
Tuscany was the best governed of all Italy's 
separate States, yet never a soul is found to 
advocate the restoration of the old order. Si 



14 THE TUSCAN TEMPERAMENT 

stava meglio quando si stava peggio — we were 
better off when we were worse off; this popular 
saying is the only retrospective expression one 
ever hears, and it has no reference to dynasty, 
but only to material well-being. Tuscany under 
the recent Grand Dukes seems to have been a 
kind of earthly paradise : £$o a year was a 
competency, and £100 a year a fortune; taxes 
were almost nil, trade thriving, living cheap, 
wine so abundant that the peasant women used 
to bathe their children in it, and personal liberty 
greater than in the present day. You could do 
almost anything you liked in old Tuscany except 
preach revolution, practise rebellion, and propa- 
gate heresy. Yet — unlike Naples, the worst gov- 
erned of the States — not a shred of a Legitimist 
party exists in Tuscany, and the King of Italy 
has no more devoted subjects than the Tuscans, 
not even among his native Piedmontese. One 
will find more people in one small city of the old 
Sardinian kingdom in favour of the restitution of 
the Temporal Power, than in the whole of the 
country of papal St. Catherine of Siena. This is 
but one of those characteristic contradictions and 
surprises with which the complex Tuscan tempera- 
ment is for ever plaguing the distracted observer. 
And talking of the Temporal Power leads one 
naturally to the subject of religion. The Tuscan 
temperament — if it is ever safe to give it any 
single simple attribute — is essentially devout, but 



RELIGION IN TUSCANY 15 

many of the Tuscans are no longer religious. 
Although one would expect from many other 
indications that a Tuscan would always be at 
extremes, yet practical propagandist infidelity is 
a negligible quantity existing only in artisan clubs 
and freemason lodges ; while indifference pure and 
simple is rife and rampant, extending nowadays 
even to the womenkind of the bourgeois classes. 
I think it was Pius IX. who said there were no 
Frenchmen in Purgatory, that they were all either 
in Paradise or the Inferno. Purgatory, I should 
say, must be full of Tuscans. Extreme in their 
politics, extreme in their passions, in their loves 
and hates and jealousies, they content themselves 
with the minimum in religion when they do not 
neglect it altogether. Of course so simple a 
statement about so complex a people needs modi- 
fication. There are whole classes of men in 
Tuscany sincerely and enthusiastically religious. 
The old-fashioned aristocrat is religious, and so 
is the hard-worked peasant ; it would be impos- 
sible to find a body of more sincerely religious 
men than the Tuscan clergy, both secular and 
regular. And really when the observer has quite 
made up his mind that religious indifferentism is rife 
in the towns, a visit to one of the large churches, 
where a vast crowd is listening in rapt attention 
to a sermon an hour long and at the close com- 
plaining of its brevity, immediately disturbs his 
previous judgment, and he begins to think that 



16 THE TUSCAN TEMPERAMENT 

there must be after all a great deal of religion in 
Tuscan towns. One thing at least is certain, that 
the Tuscan temperament is eminently susceptible 
of being worked upon by religion, that it is cap- 
able of rising to a revival movement, and that 
there are not wanting signs that this revival has 
already begun. 

With all his faults, in spite of all the difficulty 
we have in comprehending his character, in spite 
of contradictions, complexities, and crudities, the 
Tuscan is perhaps the most charming of all the 
children of Adam, just as his country, in spite of 
all its drawbacks, in spite of fierce heat, damp, 
scirocco, tramontana, mosquitoes, and all the 
plagues of a vexatious bureaucracy, is more 
nearly like the Promised Land than any other. 
But to live in that enchanted land and dwell 
among its siren people, needs an apprenticeship 
not easy to serve, and many a Philistine from 
beyond Jordan cancels his articles early in the 
apprenticeship and flees the country in affright 
or disgust. It is often only after years of hard 
service, constant uneasiness, and continual per- 
plexity that the stranger sojourning in the land 
awakens one day to find that he is dwelling in 
Eden, and sees on all sides of him, living in the 
flesh and working in the spirit, characters and 
ideals which had dimly figured among the dreams 
he dreamt in the far-off days of his generous, 
romantic boyhood. 



TUSCAN TYPES 




ARMS OF THE ORDER OF FRIARS MINOR 



FRA PACIFICO 



Just as I opened the hall-door to go out into the 
street, the house bell rang out apologetically. 

The doorway was darkened by a figure whom I 
had no sort of wish to encounter, of whom I had 
perhaps a sort of vague fear and dislike. But I 
could not now withdraw. This kind of figure had 
become very familiar to me in Tuscan streets ; 
all my life long had I been familiar with it in 
the world's heritage of religious pictures. But I 
had never exchanged a word with such a figure, 
nor had I hitherto heard the sound of human 
speech come across the lips of any one of them. 

It was a Franciscan friar who humbly darkened 
my door, and he had come to ask an alms. As 
I stood gazing at him curiously, it seemed to me, 



20 FRA PACIFICO 

by one of those psychological freaks which visit 
us all at times, that I had enacted this scene in 
another existence. But I was wrong. Reason 
and memory came to my aid. It was not I who 
had enacted this scene in another life, but Laur- 
ence Sterne who had enacted it in this, and he 
has described it for all time in the " Sentimental 
Journey." Blessed be Laurence Sterne, who, 
having sinned the sin of discourtesy against the 
most courteous of all mankind, has, by the 
moving confession of his crime, made it im- 
possible that any gentleman should ever again 
treat a Religious with discourtesy! Leastways, 
he saved me from the sin that day. 

Pacifico was this friar's name, and " Fra " his 
designation. He was no priest or father, but a 
simple lay-brother of the Franciscan Riformati} 
His habit was of a coarse brown stuff, faded and 
threadbare ; a knotted cord was girded round his 
waist ; his sandalled feet were covered with the 

1 Alas ! (the " alas ! " is but a sigh of human and historic re- 
gret, not a murmur against the exercise of Apostolic authority) — 
alas ! there are no longer any Riformati. The wise Constitution 
"Felicitate quadam" of Leo XIII., under date the 4th October 
1897, has reduced the six Franciscan families to three, has joined 
the Osservanti of all the world, the Riformati of Italy, the Alcan- 
tarini of Spain, and the Cordeliers or Recollects of France, into 
one body, under the glorious and primitive style and title of " the 
Friars Minor." We have, therefore, now only three Franciscan 
families — the Friars Minor, the Conventuals, and the Capuchins. 
The Friars Minor wear a deep brown dyed habit, and are dis- 
calced ; the Conventuals wear black, and are shod and unshaven ; 
the Capuchins have an undyed brown habit, are barefoot, and 
wear beards. I ask pardon of the instructed for these very 



THE FRIAR'S EMBARRASSMENT 21 

fine white dust of a Tuscan high-road : at my 
appearance he had lifted the small brown skull- 
cap, which was his sole protection against the 
hot April sun, and stood there, twisting it apolo- 
getically between his ringers. The more I looked 
at him, the more did I wander back in fancy to 
the room in Dessein's hotel at Calais, where 
Yorick met with Father Lorenzo. Here was 
the same "attitude of entreaty," the same "thin 
spare form," the same "mild, pale, penetrating 
face," the same freedom from all "common- 
place ideas of fat, contented ignorance." And 
his face, too, "looked forwards, and looked as 
if it looked to something beyond this world." 

The friar's embarrassment was great when he 
found the door thus suddenly opened upon him by 
the signore of the house, a manifest foreigner too. 

" Buon giorno, signoria" he began with a 
quaintly demure courtesy — " I demand a thou- 
sand pardons " 

elementary details, but a lengthy experience has shown me that 
many people, instructed in everything else, flounder when they 
come to touch a Religious Order. A young writer, who is at 
present delighting us all with his pictures of Italian life, and 
astounding us with his erudition, yet makes Capuchins walk down 
the streets of Verona one hundred and sixty-six years before they 
came into being, and in another place confides a youth to their 
education fifty-six years before the date of their foundation. The 
Riformati used to fasten their cloak with a clasp of wood and 
leather; they have now had to adopt the more expensive brass hook 
and eye of the Observantins. I have succeeded in securing Fra 
Pacifico's simple, well-worn wooden clasp, and I treasure it as a 
relic against the day of his canonisation. 



22 FRA PACIFICO 

His voice was very musical. I looked into 
the mild blue eyes, and liked him. Then I had 
never spoken to a friar, and there was about 
this friar, as about Father Lorenzo, so simple 
a grace, such an air of deprecation in the 
whole cast of his look and figure, that I 
should have been bewitched had I sent him 
empty away. 

" Passz," I said instead ; " come in, won't you ? " 

Fra Pacifico held back diffidently, and his eyes 
lit up with a childlike wonder. 

" I had but called to ask an alms of your 
charity," he answered. 

"Passz, passz\ pregol — let me entreat you," I 
said, " to come in ! " 

I held the door open wider. The friar made 
me a low obeisance, and with a smile that acknow- 
ledged my powers of persuasion, entered the hall 
and stood expectant on the door-mat. 

"In here," I went on as I pushed him before 
me ; " into my study." 

"O quanti libril — what a lot of books!" he 
cried, in unfeigned surprise. "It almost reminds 
me of what our convent library used to be ! " 

"Used to be?" I asked, mighty pleased at his 
praise of my books. " Have you then no library 
nowr 

" Alas ! no, signore, not above forty odd 
volumes or so. They took our books from us 
when we were suppressed, and put them into the 



AN INCONSIDERATE REMARK 23 

town library, where nobody, says the Father 
Guardian, ever looks at them, because they are 
all in Latin and treat of theology." 

" But how can you have been ' suppressed ' 
when you are still in existence ? " I asked, 
laughing. 

The friar laughed too. " We died," he an- 
swered, "and came to life again. They turned 
us out of our convent, and put it up to auction. 
Two pious gentlemen bought it and gave it 
back to us. But it is against the law now for a 
religious body to own property, so two of the 
fathers hold it in their own names as their own 
private and personal possession." 

" Then if these two fathers turned traitor, they 
could evict you all and sell the convent ! " 

It was an inconsiderate remark, drawn from me 
by curiosity, surprise, and the study of law-books. 
Fra Pacifico shuddered slightly. " Almighty 
God will not permit so great a calamity ! " he 
answered devoutly. Simple soul! I had meant 
to be so considerate, too, and avoid all Yorick's 
pitfalls, and yet here I was at the very outset, 
sowing new poisonous seeds in his mind that 
might bear all the bitter fruits of suspicion and 
distrust. Fortunately for me, they fell upon 
ground in which no rank or poisonous weeds 
would grow. 

" But sit down ! " I continued, for we had been 
standing all this time. 



24 FRA PACIFICO 

He was about to expostulate, Tuscan fashion, 
when his eye caught a picture on the wall, and in 
an instant he was before it with hands clasped in 
strong emotion. It was the death of St. Francis, 
by Ghirlandajo, a coloured representation of the 
Arundel Society. 

When he had satisfied his hunger of gazing 
he turned to me, and his blue eyes were moist. 

"Thesignore is a Christian, 1 then," he said, 
"that he has a picture of our holy founder?" 

"Your holy founder," I answered a trifle sen- 
tentiously; "if the product of one Church, if the 
founder of one Order, is the inheritance of the 
world and the beloved of all mankind." 

Fra Pacifico opened his eyes wide in surprise. 
" Is he so great as all that ? " he exclaimed ; " so 
great that even the Protestanti love him ! I had 
not known it. Alas ! in my dear country, so 
changed from what it was, there are those who 
revile him and his children, as they revile the 
holy faith which he professed." 

How musical his voice was, and how innocent, 
how captivating, his enthusiasm ! I made him sit 
down, and I made him discuss a glass of ver- 
mouth, but an English biscuit, though it greatly 
excited his curiosity, he would in nowise touch, 
because it was the season of Lent. 

My mind wandered as he talked courteous 

1 "Christian," in the common parlance of Tuscany, means 
" Catholic." 



A RELIGIOUS MAN 25 

commonplaces to me, and I took instead to 
gazing at him and speculating about him. What 
was he before he put on that habit ? What was 
the rank in life from which he sprung ere he 
had become transmuted by the magic wand of 
St. Francis ? Was he of patrician family, or was 
.he a peasant's son ? Surely the son of prince or 
duke, if gentle manners are an index of noble 
birth. These were gentle manners certainly, but 
there was a quality in them that could not be 
ascribed to mere gentility of birth. It was a 
quality that might have been attained by prince 
or peasant, but not easily either by the one or the 
other. For want of a better word I must call 
it spirituality. And then a sudden explanation 
of it all rushed into my mind ; this was a religious 
man, and I had never been face to face with such 
an one before. 

" Is your convent far from here?" I asked 
presently. 

" Some twelve miles or so along the coast." 
" And do you come into the town often ? " 
u Every week or ten days, according to our 
necessities, for we live entirely by alms." 

" But there is no train or other conveyance 
along the coast." 

"I walk," replied Fra Pacifico simply. ** If I 
start at four in the morning I am here by eight 
o'clock, and have the whole day before me to 
disturb {incomodare) the good and kind." 



26 FRA PACIFICO 

" And you breakfast on the way ? " 

Fra Pacifico shrugged his shoulders. " Break- 
fast is not a meal," he said, "but there are kind 
friends who give me breakfast in the town." 

" Then you walk here without having eaten 
anything ! " I cried. Fra Pacifico blushed when 
he saw that he had betrayed his act of mortifica- 
tion. " I hope," I resumed, "that you will some- 
times do me the pleasure of breakfasting in this 
house." 

The friar rose from his seat and made me a bow. 
" I shall indeed be honoured, signore," he replied. 

"And may I come and pay you a visit at the 
convent? I shall drive, though, and not walk," 
I added, laughing. 

Again the humble friar rose and bowed to me. 
"The Father Guardian will indeed be honoured 
to welcome you, signore," he said ; " but our con- 
vent is a poor place, and we have neither pictures 
nor marbles to show. It is the infirmary of the 
Order. The old fathers who are past work go 
there to die ; those who are sick come to seek 
health from the strong tonic breezes of the Tyr- 
rhenian Sea." 

"I will certainly come," I said, "and that very 
soon." 

Fra Pacifico rose to go. I came to the front 
door with him and held it open for him. 
"Expect me very soon," I said. He smiled 
upon me, and bade me a polite adieu. Then 



A KIND ACT REPAID 27 

only did it occur to me. "Why, santo cte/o!" 
I cried, "I am sending you empty away!" 

Fra Pacifico only smiled again. 

I produced my pocket-book and offered him 
three paper livres. He was covered with confu- 
sion, and I afterwards learnt that I had given ten 
or fifteen times as much as any friar would expect. 

About ten days later Fra Pacifico called again, 
and left, with many messages for me, a mighty 
gift of vegetables grown upon the convent 
grounds — cardoons, tomatoes, endive, fennel 
stalks, and the appetising salad known as barba 
de Cappuccini. Such a great quantity, surely, I 
could not have bought in the market-place for 
the dole I had given him in charity. My cook 
told me he always did his long walk into town 
laden in this way with a sack of vegetables as 
a thank-offering for those who had been kind to 
his convent. So difficult is it to do anything 
for nothing in Tuscany. Do but do a kind act, 
and the recipient of it straightway sets about 
seeking how he may repay you. 

A fortnight afterwards, Fra Pacifico came to 
breakfast. I was still in bed and asleep. His 
breakfast was a cup of black, sugarless coffee, 
and a slice of dry bread. He would not sit 
down to it ; he would take it nowhere but in 
the kitchen and off the bare deal table, and 
insisted afterwards on washing up his cup and 
platter. Perhaps this custom is enjoined by the 



28 FRA PACIFICO 

rule of his Order. Perhaps it is part of a 
private system of his own for attaining to the 
completest self-abnegation and humility. I do 
not know. 

Fra Pacifico came to "breakfast," and again 
I did not see him. Again he brought me 
vegetables — dainty cardoons, sweet kidney- 
beans, and succulent artichokes. I gave orders 
that he was to have the bounteous alms of a 
livre a month. He left me many messages of 
thanks, many messages of goodwill, and the 
prayer that I would not forget my promised 
visit to the convent. And he left me too, at 
different times, ever such odd little prints of 
saints, and images, and miracle-pictures. One 
of them he desired that I would carry about 
me, and I might then look for every sort of 
blessing, both spiritual and temporal. It repre- 
sents the holy father St. Francis, in a cave at 
wild La Verna where he received the stigmata, 
in the act of handing his famous triple-benedic- 
tion to poor tempted Fra Leone. The bene- 
diction is written on a parchment which Fra 
Leone was to carry about him, and, in Italian, 
it runs as follows : — 

// Signore ti benedica e ti custodisca : 

Ti mostri la sua faccia e abbia misericordia di te: 

Volga a te il suo s guar do e ti dia face} 

1 This is, of course, only a conventional representation of the 
original Benediction, of which a facsimile is given in the chapter 
on " La Verna." 



NO MORE CARDOONS FOR DINNER 29 

Heaven forgive me! There is superstition 
in the very air of Tuscany ; it penetrates the 
veins of the most complacent Pyrrhonist ; it stirs 
the soul of the doughtiest Protestant ; it puts 
to confusion even the most rabid anti-clerical. 
I do carry the picture about me, and no 
grave evil has befallen me since, true as it is 
that no grave evil ever befell me before, save 
once. 

I go to bed late and lie abed late. Fra Paci- 
fico came in the early morning at breakfast 
time, and so, wrapped in sloth, I never chanced 
to see him. Six months went by. Either it 
was hot, or it was wet, or it was windy, or I 
fancied myself mighty busy, or, truth to tell, 
not seeing him, his image and his influence 
grew faint ; but certain it is I did not pay my 
visit to the convent. 

Twelve months passed or more, and I sud- 
denly became aware that I was no longer having 
cardoons for dinner. And then, why to be sure, 
that monthly lira was no longer figuring in my 
accounts, and it must be quite a long while since 
I received a new santino. Could the humble 
friar be offended because I had never paid my 
visit ? That was impossible in one who had so 
perfectly moulded his soul to ancient Christian 
models. Like Father Lorenzo, Nature in him, 
too, had done with her resentments. Could he 
be ill then? I ordered round Beniamino, my 



30 FRA PACIFICO 

cabman, at once, and drove off to the convent, 
twelve miles along the hot, white, dusty coast- 
road. 

The convent was no convent, but the poorest 
kind of house ; the church beside it was barer 
than any conventicle. But there was a cross 
upon the top of the church, and there was a 
majolica Annunciation over the door of the house, 
and, if you looked narrowly enough, neither the 
one nor the other could have belonged to any 
but the poor sons of St. Francis ; for above the 
stone porch of the garden gate you would have 
seen a rude discoloured fresco of a Cross of 
Calvary traversed by two human arms in saltire, 
one in bend sinister naked, representing the 
arm of Our Lord, the other in bend, clothed 
in the habit of St. Francis, both bearing the 
stigmata. 1 I knocked at the door. It was 
opened by the cheeriest of lay- brothers. His 
face beamed like the sun at morning, and his 
eyes twinkled upon me as if my advent had 
given him the one pleasure in life he most of 
all desired. 

" Is Fra Pacifico in ? " I asked. 

Then that beaming face grew all of a sudden 
woefully chapfallen ; those twinkling eyes started 

1 This beautiful and vivid blazon of the Arms of the Friars 
Minor is from the skilful hand of the celebrated herald, Dr. John 
Woodward of Montrose, no longer living, alas ! to charm us with 
his picturesque pen and brilliant erudition. See his " Ecclesias- 
tical Heraldry," p. 418. 



ALAS! HE IS DEAD 31 

with tears, and at my heart there came a sore 
pang. He need not have spoken. 

" Alas ! he is dead, dear signore. He died 
close upon two months ago. We are all dis- 
tracted, and suffer the sorest privations. He was 
such an excellent beggar, was our dear brother ; 
we wanted for nothing. But he never wrote 
down anything. We do not know who his 
friends were in the big city. I, who am his un- 
worthy successor, do not know whom to go to, 
and have no success. We are like to die of 
hunger, and our only hope is in God Almighty 
and our holy father St. Francis." 

" I was one of his friends," I answered; "an 
altogether unworthy one. Come to me when 
you come into the city and I will double my alms 
for the sake of his dear memory. Is he buried 
here ? " I continued, again remembering Yorick 
and again blessing him. 

" Over yonder, signore," replied the lay-brother, 
indicating a tiny campo santo not a quarter of a 
mile distant. His mute astonished look seemed 
to ask if it could be possible that I, a signore, 
that I, a forestiere, really wished to see the grave 
of a lay-brother of St. Francis? But I did not 
tell him, and bidding him cordially adieu, begged 
him to call upon me regularly when he came over 
to the " big city." 

I found the grave for myself, a mound of earth 
with the grass not yet well grown upon it, and 



32 FRA PACIFICO 

at the head of it a wooden cross pometty, bearing 

this inscription : — 

Qui riposa 

Nel bacio del Signore 

PACIFICO 

Frate Laico dell' Ordine dei Minori Riformati 

Nel secolo Raimondo de' Nobili Cianciani di Arezzo. 

Visse santamente Anni 62, 

E santamente mori 

addi 19 Marzo 1893. 



Una Prece. 1 

At the head of the grave, too, there was some- 
thing more, something that had no business to 
be there — a clump of nettles. I did what Yorick 
did — I plucked them up. And then I sat down 
upon the mound and once more did what Yorick 
did, but what that was, the world, a hundred 
years the colder since, has now no care to com- 
prehend or hear. 

Dear Fra Pacifico, friend of an hour and 
memory of a lifetime, God have thee in His 
keeping through all Eternity. 

R. I. P. 

1 Here lies, in our Lord's embrace, Pacifico, a lay-brother in 
the Order of the Reformed Franciscans, known in the world as 
Raymund, of the noble house of the Cianciani of Arezzo. He 
lived a holy life of sixty-two years, and died a holy death on 
the 19th March 1893. Spare him at least one prayer. 



II 

MY UNPAID FACTOTUM 

He was the first acquaintance I made in Tus- 
cany. I was leaning over the steamer's side 
looking down at the swarm of boats that sur- 
rounded her. I knew no word of the Tuscan 
tongue, and was dimly wondering how I should 
get myself and my luggage ashore, and to what 
extent I should be fleeced in the process, when 
a brown, clear eye from a boat below caught 
mine full. It belonged to a gaunt creature in 
blue serge suit and boating cap, with the face of 
a Mephistopheles and the bearing and manners of 
an Archangel. And from his mouth there issued 
(O dulcet sound!) English — as she is spoke, it is 
true — but English intelligible with an effort. 

"Inglis gen'lman?" he queried with a polite grin. 

I nodded, distrustfully perhaps. 

" You come my boat, sair — ver good boat." 

I reflected a moment. The Mephistophelean 
face in repose I distrusted profoundly ; animated, 
it seemed to glow with an extra dose of the milk 
of human kindness. For better or for worse I 
would go in his boat. 

33 c 



34 MY UNPAID FACTOTUM 

" All right ! " I shouted down. 

"Au'ri! Au'ri!" he shouted back with great 
contentment ; and in two minutes more he was 
beside me on the deck possessing himself of 
my hand-bags and excitedly bawling directions 
about my big trunks. 

We landed without misadventure ; a cab of my 
guide's approving sprung, as if by magic, from 
the quay-side. He openly prevented me giving a 
silver five-franc piece to the boatman, and made 
that angry, baffled worthy content himself with two. 
Then came the difficult question of tipping him. 
I fingered a variety of coins diffidently, and finally 
got ready the five-franc piece he had saved me. 

" What hotel you go to, gen'lman ? " 

I told him, and tried surreptitiously to pass the 
five-franc piece upon him. He pushed my arm 
politely away, gently forced me into the cab, and 
in a trice was on the box beside the driver. 

At the hotel he came up to my room, and 
patiently and gleefully unstrapped all my boxes. 
"No spend silver moneys here," he said confi- 
dentially ; "sell silver moneys and spend paper 
moneys. Me show Mister t'morr' mawnin'." 
Again I fumbled for the five-franc piece, but 
he was already at the door bowing me a stately 
"goo'-bye, sair!" I never managed to pass that 
particular tip ; it was the first of a series of 
defeats which I sustained in attempts to reward 
loyal and valuable services. 



CIALl WHITE 35 

This happened six years ago. I know my 
friend very well now, and prize him highly. 
His name is Carlo Bianchi ; he is keeper of a 
boarding-house for English seamen. His domi- 
nant trait — if we put aside great natural good- 
nature — is an absorbing, awe-stricken admiration 
for everything and everybody English. You 
can only pain him in one way — if you call him 
either "Carlo" or "Bianchi." He calls himself 
"Charlie White," and spells Charlie "Ciali" on 
the card which announces that he has a "home" 
offering every comfort to members of the Mer- 
cantile Marine. It is this passionate admiration 
of everything British that prompts him, when he 
has nothing better to do, to go off in a boat to 
the steamers in the hope of being able to assist 
some helpless English traveller. He often meets 
with scant courtesy and withering scepticism at 
their hands, but remains undauntedly revering. 
We must indeed be a great and proud nation to 
have aroused all this admiration in the bosom 
of a Tuscan man of the world like " Ciall," for 
as a rule he sees but degenerate specimens of 
the Britisher. The members of the English 
Mercantile Marine who come under his fatherly 
care are too often the worst of the class, men 
who have deserted from their ships, or lost their 
ships through drunken orgies, or who have been 
politely lodged in the tempered seclusion of a 
Tuscan gaol, or the still milder fastnesses of the 



36 MY UNPAID FACTOTUM 

strong room of the Town Hospital consequent 
upon a Bacchanalian night-brawl. If he encour- 
aged their vices he would get more men into his 
house, and put more money in his pocket. But 
he routs them out of unsavoury places, reclaims 
the wages of which they have been fleeced, packs 
them into boats, and sends them off to their ships 
to save them from desertion ; and all this because he 
reveres the mighty British nation even in its dregs. 
Nearly every morning "Ciali" presents himself 
at my house with the respectful offer of his ser- 
vices. I have to invent commissions to save him 
from lapsing into despondency. I do not pay 
him. He borrows freely, but always pays back. 
He will accept an old suit of clothes gladly, and 
wears it with swagger and distinction. I visit his 
fat "Signora" at the boarding-house sometimes, 
and contrive to slip trifles into the children's 
money-boxes. Filthy lucre I can only pass off 
on him by resorting to ruse. A firm of solicitors 
in England is paying for this, I say, or an English 
shipowner wants such and such a thing done ; 
then all "Ciali's" scruples vanish. But I have 
to use this species of finesse sparingly, for he is 
wily and observant, well versed in every branch 
of honest deception, and a past-master in the 
gentle art of giving without seeming to give. 
Certainly his faith in human nature would receive 
a rude shock if he were ever to detect me in 
anything so perfidious as an attempt to reward 



A DYING MAN 37 

devoted services which were meant to be given 
out of pure loyalty and affection. 

Poor "Ciall"! He managed to wine" 1 himself 
very closely about my heart-strings. Most keenly 
did I realise this one terrible night last Decem- 
ber. I saw — a familiar enough sight — a company 
of the masked Misericordia Brothers running full 
tilt down the main street with their easy-springed 
hand ambulance cart, foot-passengers and traffic 
willingly making an avenue for them, as when 
a fire-engine tears along the London streets. 
The light of a fitful gas-lamp revealed the form 
of a prostrate human being in the cart, and then 
lit up with momentary horror the ghastly features 
of poor "Ciall" contorted with the anguish of 
mortal pain. I saw, with a pang at my heart, 
a sign which showed me it was a very serious 
case. These Misericordia Brothers, for all they 
are a religious confraternity, are a very practical 
set of people. One of the Brothers was running 
alongside, holding the dying man's wrist, and 
keeping his fingers upon the flickering pulse ; in 
his left hand he held a large stop-watch, so that 
if the sufferer died upon the road the police 
could be informed of the exact moment of death. 
I followed swiftly towards the hospital ; but before 
many moments were over the pace of the runners 
slackened, for the poor pulse had ceased to beat 
for ever. 

It seems that two pot-valiant Welsh firemen 




38 MY UNPAID FACTOTUM 

had got into an altercation with a sober Tuscan 
^an. A real or fancied insult to the girl on 
tiiv_ man's arm was the cause of it. The blood 
which g ts into a Tuscan's head upon the venom 
motions of mad jealousy is more deadly than 
any drink : out came the inevitable knife. But 
"Ciali," the peacemaker, was near at hand. He 
rushed up — too late alas ! — to quench the flames, 
for the insensate Tuscan no longer knew what he 
did, and poor "Ciali" received, just above the 
heart, the terrible blade that was meant for a far 
unworthier breast. And so he died, a martyr to 
his love of Great Britain, and in heroic devotion 
to her offscourings. 

" Ciali's " funeral was a great affair. All the 
waterside population turned out. Many British 
seamen were present ; most of them took a turn 
at carrying the coffin the five long miles to the 
Campo Santo. Best of all, an English captain 
who had known him for years, and like every- 
body else used him as "unpaid factotum," brought 
a Red Ensign, and covered the coffin with it. 
Borne to his grave by British seamen and covered 
with the Union Jack ! The tingling sensations of 
an honest, simple pride must surely have caused 
him to turn in his coffin. If the poor fellow could 
but have known of the honours that awaited him 
in death, how exultantly he would have marched 
into the undiscovered country from whose bourne 
no traveller returns. May his soul rest in peace ! 



Ill 

MY COOK 

After a year's residence in Tuscany, with grow- 
ing love of the place and people, and a modest 
acquisition of the Tuscan tongue, I decided upon 
a bold step — I decided to abandon the artificial 
comfort of hotel existence and set up house. 
Many difficult questions presented themselves, 
but all seemed simplicity itself in comparison 
with the great servant question. How to find a 
serving-man, and an elderly housemaid, and a 
tolerable cook, who would not ill-treat a lonely 
foreign bachelor? I secured a grey-haired trea- 
sure of a housemaid — Concetta — (through no 
merits of my own, it is true), but cooks — they 
came pouring in upon me for three days, ani- 
mated, loud-voiced, well-mannered women of all 
ages, dressed in their flaming best for the occa- 
sion, all endowed seemingly with every perfec- 
tion, their one desire in life to serve me unto 
death. One and all got fearfully on my nerves, 
and nearly caused me to abandon my temerarious 
project. 

But on the morrow of the fourth day there 



40 MY COOK 

presented herself a small, neat, carefully-appa- 
reled woman, animated like the others, for she 
was a Tuscan, but quiet of voice, and with better 
manners and a more restrained bearing than most 
duchesses. Of a melancholy cast, too, which was 
rather an advantage, for the hilarious happiness 
of the Tuscan servant is a little detrimental to 
the tranquillity desirable in a student home. Yet 
since the Tuscans regard melancholy as a species 
of rudeness, so her good manners seemed to Lave 
taught her to assume a gladness that she did not 
feel. 

" What is your name ? " I queried magiste- 
rially. 

11 Elvirina Pezzi, signore." 

" And your age ? " 

A pause. By a delicately-shaded change of 
manner she managed to convey that I had asked 
an indelicate and unmasculine question. Perhaps 
I betrayed a sign of irritation. 

"Thirty-one or two, signore," she answered 
hastily, " or perhaps thirty-three. I do not very 
well remember." (She was forty-two, I found out 
afterwards. ) 

" Why did you leave your last place ? " 

"Because my padroni go every year to their 
country house and take all the servants. I do 
not like leaving the town." 

" Are you married ? " 

"No, signore." 



A LITTLE NEPHEW 41 

'* Have you any family or relations here ? " 

"No, signore. At least none except a little 
nephew." 

" A nephew ? " 

" Sissignore. The little son of my only sister, 
Elettra. My poor dear sister and Ezio, her hus- 
band, were carried off in the last epidemic of 
cholera, and there is none to care for the dear 
little angel but me. Ah ! you should see him, 
signore. What a sweet angiolino it is ? " 

All her assumed cheerfulness vanished, a look 
of trouble and solicitude and great tenderness 
came into her eyes. I was moved myself, and 
admired such devotion to a sister's child. It 
jarred upon the situation, but I was obliged to 
ask — 

" What wages have you been in the habit of 
receiving ? " 

" Forty francs a month, signore." 

" I cannot give you more than thirty." 

She would have bargained with me but for the 
strong emotion under which she was labouring. 

" For the sake of serving so good a padrone, 
I will come for thirty," she said. " If I content 
him he will give more in time. It is hard to 
maintain my little nephew on thirty." 

" W T hat is the name of your late master ? Will 
he let me call on him for your character ? " 

" Eh ! I should think so ! The General 
Magliani. A most worthy gentleman, but that 



42 MY COOK 

he would go into the country, and I do not like 
that. He lives at 39 Via Cavour. He will give 
the best of informations about me, for I have 
ever known how to content his palate. He is 
utterly displeased that I should go. ' Elvirina,' 
he would say to me many a time, ' thy risotto and 
thy spaghetti a stigo di came 

"Very good," I said, interrupting the flow; 
" come back to-morrow morning, and if I receive 
a good character I will engage you." 

" Then I feel that the signore has already 
engaged me." 

She smiled an apology for the little. familiarity, 
and retired with a polite curtsey. 

In the afternoon I called upon the general. 
He was out, but his signora was in. I sent in 
word what my mission was. She would be de- 
lighted to see me ; would I pass this way ? 

I passed into a tiny, cheerless reception-room, 
overloaded with an immense quantity of florid, 
tasteless knick-knacks. A fat, rubicund, good- 
natured-looking lady of forty-five or so — comfort- 
able contrast to her garish surroundings — greeted 
me cordially, and motioned me to be seated. 

" I have taken the liberty of calling for the 
character of Elvirina Pezzi," I began. 

"You may engage her with your eyes shut," 
the good-natured lady replied decisively. "An 
excellent cook, and a sober, steady, hard-work- 
ing, and very honest woman." 



A DECEPTION REVEALED 43 

There seemed really nothing else to say after 
this graphic summary of her perfections. 

Diffidently I added, " May I ask what wages 
you paid her ? " 

" Twenty-five francs a month, with wine." 

" Twenty-five ! " with a little surprise in my 
voice. " She told me she had been in the 
habit of receiving forty ! " 

"Ha! ha! ha! the little witch!" laughed the 
good-natured lady with great good-humour. " She 
received forty francs from an ignorant American 
gentleman ten years ago, and it was the joke of 
the whole market-place. Since then I don't sup- 
pose she has ever received more than twenty- 
five ! " 

I didn't like this trifling with truth. " But I've 
promised to give her thirty ! " I said plaintively. 

" Ah, well ! they take advantage of you 
foreigners. It is a real shame. But she will 
serve you well. She is worth thirty francs. I 
would give her thirty francs myself if I could 
keep her." 

" She left you, I believe, because " 

" Because she does not like coming to the 
country with us. She does not care to go away 
and leave that little rascal of a son of hers." 

" Son ! " I leapt from my chair in agitation. 
" But it is a nephew ! " I cried, scarce knowing 
what I said in my trepidation. The fat lady 
was convulsed with good-natured merriment. 



44 MY COOK 

" You may call him a nephew if you like," she 
said, amid her chuckles, "but he's her own son ! " 

"But she said she wasn't married!" I cried, 
outspoken in my bewilderment. 

This fairly set the fat lady off in uncontrollable 
laughter. These Tuscan ladies are disconcert- 
ingly plain-spoken on such subjects. 

"Why, caro signore, marriage is not an indis- 
pensable preliminary to the birth of a son," she said. 

It required time for her to recover from her 
merriment. 

"But," I persisted, "it is her sister's son — 
Elettra. She and her husband — Ezio, I think 
— died within twenty-four hours of one another 
in the last outbreak of cholera ! " 

This was too much for the fat lady, who began 
to irritate and annoy me by her want of restraint 
and reserve. She was holding her handkerchief 
before her mouth, and the tears were streaming 
down her cheeks. 

" She has no sister ! " she cried convulsively. 
And then with difficulty, "And Heaven be 
praised, we haven't had the cholera here for 
thirty years ! " 

I thanked her stiffly. 

" Signora," I said, "I'm much obliged to you 
for your outspoken frankness. You have saved 
me the unpleasantness of taking a bad character 
into my house. I thank you. Good afternoon." 

She glanced at me with good-natured surprise. 



AN AWKWARD SITUATION 45 

"Come, come, caro signore, you take too 
serious a view of the matter. It is nothing. It 
happens perpetually." (I winced at her terrible 
outspokenness.) " Elvirina is none the worse 
cook in consequence. I tell you she is an ex- 
cellent servant. She is an excellent mother, too, 
devoted to the boy. And she is quite steady, 
and has no lover now." (Again I winced.) " You 
will not repent having engaged her. Good after- 
noon, signore," she added a trifle stiffly as she 
glanced into my face, which, I suppose, was hard 
and conventionally set ; " if I had known the 
effect of my frank avowal, I should have sup- 
ported Elvirina's statement and said it was a 
nephew." A shade of the good-natured twinkle 
returned into her eyes. 

All this was very surprising, but I was mightily 
disgusted with Elvirina and her barefaced lies. 
I couldn't help liking the woman, I saw she was 
a good servant ; but I was fully resolved not to 
have her in my house at any price. Still, I did 
not at all relish the task of meeting her next 
day. I could not hope to attain Tuscan free-and- 
easiness of speech on the subject of " nephews." 
It is a difficult subject for an untutored Saxon 
to handle delicately face to face with a woman. 
I resolved that I would not touch upon it but 
put her off with a diplomatic shuffle. But the 
situation was awkward and unpleasant ; I worked 
myself into a state of nervous helplessness, and 



46 MY COOK 

by the time she came was wholly without a plan 
of action. 

"The signore will have received good infor- 
mations about me ? " she asked eagerly. 

Her question nonplussed me. To answer 
"No" would have compromised the Signora 
Magliani, and would not have been quite true. 
I was therefore whirled into answering "Yes." 

"Then the signore will engage me as he 
said ? " Her directness bereft me of all diplo- 
matic suavity of language. 

"No," I answered curtly. 

"Then he has received bad informations 
about me?" 

"No." It was really too foolish this helpless- 
ness of mine. I must imitate her own directness. 
"You told me you had received forty francs a 
month," I said severely. 

" But not from the Signora Magliani. I have 
received forty francs a month though." (That 
was quite true.) " If it is a question of wages, I 
will come to so good a signore for twenty-five 
francs. It is little. I have to pay fifteen francs 
a month for my nephew's board and lodging, and 
five francs for his schooling ; that leaves me but 
five francs a month for myself." 

This further reference to the "nephew" roused 
me to the full. 

"You say he is your nephew, but he is your 
son ! " I cried, with Anglo-Saxon brutality. 



I ENGAGE HER AFTER ALL 47 

The woman pursed her lips and controlled 
herself. 

" Did the Signora Magliani tell you that ? It 
is no business of hers. It surprises me that so 
well-conducted a lady — she herself, too, a mother 
— could be so indelicate." (How delicious!) "It 
is true he is my son ! And what then ? " 

" But you said he was your nephew. I like 
truthful people ! " I answered sternly. 

Elvirina looked a little perplexed. She seemed 
to regard me as a species of barbarian unaccus- 
tomed to the usages and phraseology of civilised 
society. 

"That is a form of expression among us," she 
said quietly. (And has been for centuries, I 
reflected, as I thought of the historical nepotism 
of her country.) "It is no lie. If the signore 
objects to such a trifle it is evident that I shall 
not content him. But I am a good cook, and 
work hard. What more can he wish from me ? " 

Tears stood full in her eyes as she curtsied to 
depart. Whatever her past levities might have 
been, it was evident that she was sobered now ; 
work and the " nephew " were the two concerns 
of her life. It would have needed a woman to 
reject her at that moment ; I was only a help- 
less bachelor, launched upon the devious paths of 
housekeeping, and I engaged her there and then. 

My cook has proved a great success. She is 



48 MY COOK 

unassuming, uncomplaining, very hard-working, 
and a bit of a cordon bleu. She cannot read or 
write, for all her splendour out of doors. Some- 
times she tries to cheat herself out of a soldo in 
doing accounts ; I don't think she tries to cheat 
me. The " nephew " I have never seen. He 
might not exist, and need never have been men- 
tioned. But we refer to him without shamefaced- 
ness, and call him a " son." I have sent him 
useless toys, and this Christmas that is coming 
I mean to raise Elvirina to the pitch of earthly 
happiness by telling her to have him to dinner in 
the kitchen. 



IV 

MY SERVING -MAN 

I would to Heaven that I had never set eyes 
upon my serving-man, Benedetto, and yet I 
would not for all the world throw away a pearl 
of so great price. Still, it is an unkind trick of 
the Fates to have sent so puzzling and eerie a 
creature to black the boots and brush the clothes 
of an exiled Anglo-Saxon. He is a pattern of 
diligence and honesty certainly, but his perfec- 
tions are too disquieting : they are the perfections 
of the saint, while his imperfections, product of 
some clownish admixture in the man's clay, are 
irritating in the extreme. No serving-man is 
entitled to have so much character — to have, in 
fact, self-abnegation that is tragic, virtue that is 
heroic, religious aspirations that are saintly, and 
at the same time manners that are boorish, and 
physical deficiencies that are provoking and re- 
pellent. What if this does not interfere with the 
housework? It interferes — a much more import- 
ant thing — with the master's peace of mind, and 
leads him to lengthy ruminative digressions when 
he should be trying to fathom quite other philo- 

49 D 



50 MY SERVING -MAN 

sophy. Why indeed am I always studying- him 
and speculating about him, instead of grumbling 
at his hard and willing and conventionally- 
imperfect service, or ordering him to the devil 
for his stupid inability to understand my bad 
Tuscan ? There is something in this more than 
natural if philosophy could find it out. 

Benedetto is fifty-six years of age, very bowed 
at the shoulders and bent at the knees. The 
crumpled, withered skin of his face, yellow and 
blistered as ancient vellum, is drawn tight across 
high cheek-bones. Two narrow slits reveal eyes, 
mild and meek and upturned, as in the rough 
prints of seicento Saints of the Clerks Regular. 
His grizzled hair is sparse and unkempt, and the 
semi-bald crown of his pate has a great dent in 
the centre of it. He wears a small black mous- 
tache and pizzo that on any other face would 
be rakish, and serve at least to hide his sanctity 
from the unobservant. He has a singular knack 
of besmearing new clothes, and imparting to 
them an instant semblance of old-world shabbi- 
ness. He looks anything on earth but a serving- 
man ; and as he shuffles along to market to do 
some of the cook's forgotten errands, rapt in 
far-distant meditations, he seems like nothing so 
much as a beggar who has momentarily forgotten 
to beg. Such in his outer seeming is Benedetto 
Bonanima, the serving-man whom the gods have 
sent to plague me with his service and to 



BENEDETTO'S HISTORY 51 

bless me with his loving-kindness and exceeding 
honesty. 

The Tuscans are very quick at finding out 
heroic virtue be it never so secretive, and when 
they have discovered a saint, they lift the bushel 
which had hid his virtues and blazon him in the 
market-place. Hence it comes that there were 
plenty of homely hagiographers to tell me scraps 
of the life of San Benedetto. He had served his 
previous and only master, a rich bachelor of 
studious habits and very irregular life, some 
thirty-five years. This same master, the Cava- 
liere Ugo della Chiala, was one of the characters of 
the town. A distinguished numismatologist and 
archaeologist, a fellow and member of numerous 
antiquarian and historical societies, his opinion 
sought by all the learned of the Continent, he yet 
led within the precincts of his gloomy old palazzo 
a life that set at defiance all the conventionalities, 
and rivalled in its dissoluteness the hare-brained 
extravagances of a raw patrician boy. When 
Benedetto had done with the army at twenty- 
one he was a smart enough young fellow, very 
innocent and good-hearted it is true, but famed 
rather among waiting-women and the popolane 
for the brilliance of his amatory badinage. Ser- 
vice with Signor Ugo della Chiala sobered him 
completely, and changed all the current of his 
life. The scholarly vaurien was a man of charm- 
ing presence and manners ; he played havoc in 



52 MY SERVING -MAN 

the heart of poor Benedetto, and subdued him 
to an infinite and most tender affection. But 
here came the mischief: he could not be blind 
to his master's vaunting delinquencies ; he could 
not approve nor abet them ; and so, torn between 
love and duty, he cried to Heaven for help and 
began to go much to church, to thumb big books 
of prayer, and spell out the maxims of odd little 
books and leaflets of piety. His master loved 
him too, and understood him, and seeing that 
he had no trusted friend in the world save Bene- 
detto, he accorded him all the immunities of a 
privileged being. The serving-man worked and 
slaved at the most menial tasks, anticipated in a 
thousand ways the master's wants, but in no 
single thing did he minister unto evil, and he 
would not wait at table when, as was often 
the case, the company was doubtful beyond a 
doubt. 

The strain of such a life was terrible. It 
bowed poor Benedetto's back and crooked his 
knees, but he remained undauntedly loving, un- 
weariedly slaving, incessantly praying and wrest- 
ling for his beloved padrone s soul. Had the 
master been unqualifiedly wicked the thing would 
have been less perplexing, but that he should 
have been so fond of books and cloistered quiet 
and yet so full of the tempestuous joy of life, so 
open-handed and adored of the poor, and yet so 
given up to riotous living — it was more than the 



THE SERVING -MAN A SAINT 53 

much wrought serving-man could ever rightly 
comprehend. And so more and more he betook 
himself to church, to beating his breast in nightly 
supplications, to thumbing his bulky prayer-book, 
and spelling out the hard sentences of his books 
of piety. Thus gradually, and all unconsciously, 
he developed into a much afflicted, anxious, and 
very humble saint. 

But Benedetto had his happy hours — nay, his 
happy weeks and months. There were times 
when the love and excitement of his studies 
completely overmastered the gay numismatolo- 
gist. Then all bad company was rigorously 
excluded from the house ; quiet and a great tran- 
quillity reigned supreme, and the happy Benedetto 
seemed to himself like a lay-brother serving in 
the calm seclusion of a peaceful convent. This 
was especially the case when the master saw that 
his now famous work, De Monetis Etrurice, was 
at length taking shape under his hand, and forgot 
himself in the love of it. Ah ! those were long 
happy months, in which the master was encom- 
passed by a loving care and solicitude that surely 
touched his heart, and certainly helped him to 
complete his labours. Poor Benedetto began 
timorously to think him wholly changed and 
reclaimed, but the day that the last corrected 
proof went back to the publishers there was a 
terrible and prolonged outbreak. 

Ruin came upon this singular prodigal, a com- 



54 MY SERVING -MAN 

plete ruin of his estate and a paralytica! ruin of 
his body. The three months that the broken- 
down scholar still lingered on in a modest quarter 
on the third floor of a poor-class tenement, he is 
said to have been supported out of the thrifty 
hire of his serving-man. And Benedetto brought 
him an old Capuchin priest, saw him anointed 
with the holy oils, knew that he made his con- 
fession, was present when he received the Viati- 
cum, and followed with a certain confused happi- 
ness to his last resting-place in the family vault 
of the della Chiala. 

Then on the top of such a life and such an 
affection as this, his substance gone, his heart's 
core sore and bruised, his poor mind dazed and 
reeling, he is suddenly pitchforked into the ser- 
vice of a prosaic Anglo-Saxon, who but half 
understands his beautiful tongue, and is wholly 
innocent of any violent contrasts of character. 
I have watched the poor fellow with a pathetic 
interest trying cheerfully and with unostenta- 
tious resignation to adapt himself to his new 
and strange environment, and in the process I 
have come to love him. I have tried hard, too, 
for the sake of his virtues to like him as a ser- 
vant. I cannot. He is grotesque in his anxious 
slavishness, uncouth in the manner of pressing his 
attentions, irritating in his too palpable assump- 
tions of cheerfulness, dense in taking in the differ- 
ence between a Tuscan's and a Saxon's wants. 



CONFLICTING QUALITIES 55 

But how he works ! Slovenly in his own person, 
his dearest delight is the cleanliness of the house, 
and I can see my face every morning reflected in 
my bright and shining boots. He is familiar, of 
course; every good Tuscan servant is. If they 
do not literally sit below the salt, as in the days 
when class distinctions were more apparent than 
real, they occupy a position in the house which 
implies quite as much intimacy and contact. You 
will get no good work out of them unless you 
have engaged their hearts, unless they can come 
to the master as a sure and infallible and sympa- 
thetic counsellor in all the many matters of palpi- 
tating human interest with which their lives are 
filled. 

There is a certain perverse cleverness about 
poor stupid Benedetto : when most of all you are 
sure that he will do wrong, he does right. In 
very difficult matters he is especially successful, 
and you cannot help feeling sometimes that all 
his prayers are not said in vain, and that a little 
angelic aid does come to his rescue in a crisis. 
He delivers a verbal message wonderfully well, 
though it takes a world of anxious understanding 
before it can be safely conveyed into his head. 
It is just here that the flow of his talk and his 
panic-stricken gesticulations are particularly irri- 
tating. He is quick in returning from an errand 
if there is an answer ; very slow if there is not. 
But I have ceased to chide him, for I know the 



56 MY SERVING -MAN 

reason. These churches — he cannot pass an 
open church without turning in and commend- 
ing himself to Almighty God and the Blessed 
Virgin, unless there be some weighty house-affairs 
on hand. 

Dear Benedetto, with all his faults, which I 
verily believe are, in a measure, of mine own 
creation, I would not part with him for the 
cleanest, best trained, most punctilious, clean- 
shaven automaton of a valet in the world. The 
atmosphere in Tuscany is so charged with tra- 
gedy and the potentialities of old romance, ruin 
and calamity take such giant shape here : in the 
storm and stress of such a moment, in the hour, 
perhaps, of shame and disgrace, who else would 
stand by me save this old man, so well-schooled 
in the vagaries of human perversity ? Until need 
drive me to serve myself, he shall serve me ; if 
need leave me but a crust, he shall share that too, 
for, certes, two mouths do sweeten adversity. 
And when he dies, though his life has been one 
long purgatory, many masses shall be said for 
the repose of his already resting soul. Stay with 
me then, Benedetto, and give me all the benefit 
of thy constant antique service. Wrestle a little 
in prayer. The mystery why God made Anglo- 
Saxons will become transparent to thee, and thou 
shalt plenteously find, deep-hidden beneath our 
rough tough hides, the bowels of compassion and 
of clemency. "In the battle, in the darkness, 



LET US CLING TOGETHER 57 

in the need," do thou cling to me as I will 
cling to thee, and together, content and con- 
fident, we may confront even those direst ills 
that plagued the primal chosen favourites of the 
Lord. 



V 

MY GARDENER 

My gardener is no real gardener, for my garden 
is scarcely a garden. At the back of my little 
house, which because it is a separate house and 
not a flat is dignified with the name of palazzetta 
— at the back, then, of this miniature palazzetta, 
jutting out into my neighbour's noble spreading 
gardens, is a narrow, high- walled strip of ground. 
One quarter of it is paved with backyard flags, 
and down the middle and on either side run 
brick-paved paths, flanked, at justly chosen in- 
tervals, by stucco pillars surmounted by squatting 
— talbots or alants I would call them, but that 
these dogs are too grotesque even for the fan- 
tastic science of heraldry. Large blue and 
white pots of commonest terra-cotta, tottering 
insecure on stucco pedestals, drop ivy, peri- 
winkles, stone-crop, and other hardy creeping 
plants. A fig tree, a medlar tree, three orange 
and two lemon trees, a bush or two of monthly 
roses, a plant or two of pansies, begonias and 
nasturtiums, thyme and mint for kitchen use, 

and sweet lavender for the linen-press, a myriad 

58 



PAOLO SAD BUT UNCOMPLAINING 59 

of busy lizards by day, a multitude of dancing 
fire-flies by night, owls, too, and the shrill 
screeching cicale : — all this is evidence that the 
little plot does occasionally need the fostering 
care of the hand of man. 

And Benedetto found me just the right man 
to care for it — Paolo, a brother acquaintance in 
affliction. But Paolo is no gardener now. 
Time was when for five years he was gardener 
to the General of the Division, earning the 
handsome wage of forty-five livres a month, and 
having free lodging in a mouldy, tumble-down 
outhouse at the bottom of the General's garden. 
But the General went away to command another 
Division elsewhere, and from that day Paolo 
went down, down, and has never been able to 
recover himself since. First he tried to keep 
up his proud position, and, for fear of losing 
caste, rightly would not work unless he could 
be permanent gardener to one master only ; he 
spent all his savings in the effort. Then he 
tried to work for masters with small gardens 
that only required looking to once or twice a 
week. Nothing prospered with him ; he could 
get neither the one kind of employment nor 
the other, and was obliged to abandon gardens 
and become a day labourer in the fields near 
the city walls. It made him sad, but being in 
a dumb way rather a righteous man, he bowed 
his head and did not complain. 



6o MY GARDENER 

To do a hind's work for the contadini owners 
and tenants of the fields is a hard task. In 
the summer, when the day's labour is fifteen 
hours, Paolo's monthly wage is twenty-six livres ; 
in the winter there is either no work, or but a 
short day's work, and the monthly incomings 
sink to eighteen livres — and less! In the long 
days he has two hours' interval, and of this he 
gives me half-an-hour or more, bringing me 
drinking water in barrels from the public founts, 
tending and skilfully beautifying the little plot 
of ground, and generally doing any and what- 
soever unusual and obnoxious house job may 
arise. For these services I pay him — to my 
shame be it said ! — five livres, or three shillings 
and fourpence a month. But stern economists 
threateningly tell me that I am ruining the 
market in not giving him only four livres, or 
two and eightpence a month, and I dare trifle 
no further with their sacred canons. I add, 
unknown to them, beef bones, broken bits, and 
the foul nicotined ends of cast-away Tuscan and 
Torinese cigars, which he chops up and smokes 
with relish in his unclean terra-cotta pipe. 

Paolo is a much afflicted creature, barefoot, ill- 
clothed, begrimed, and seemingly always wetted 
through ; sad and subdued when not under ob- 
servation, so hilariously cheerful when spoken 
to, you would suppose him to be rioting in this 
world's goods, instead of earning a wage that 



PAOLO'S WIFE 6 1 

does not help to ward off the diseases produced 
by hunger unsatisfied. Short and sturdily built, 
though the flesh hangs skinnily about him now, 
he is lithe and active, and can go up the tall 
stem of the medlar tree like a monkey. He 
has a thick shock of greyish hair, a thick 
greyish moustache, soft eyes expressing strong- 
desire to serve and oblige, and a se'nnight's 
stubble that never grows to beard, but is yet 
ever innocent of the razor. His age you could 
not guess, nor could you imagine him ever to 
have been different to what he is, and even 
after two years' service I do not know his sur- 
name. He is simply Paolo, and there is but 
one such. Patient, skilful, willing, very soft- 
hearted, very useful, and with a certain care- 
worn, stately courtesy of manner shining out of 
all his grime, his life is hard, and underpaid, 
and unappreciated, and has but one sweet me- 
mory — the proud lustrum of slavery as gentle- 
man's gardener to one master only. 

Heaven in its mercy has denied to Paolo 
any offspring of his loins. But he has a wife, 
Caterina, older than himself, I should say, and 
ugly, very fat, though she fares chiefly on the 
chameleon's dish — a sort of swaddled bundle of a 
woman, in fact, of uniform girth from the shoulders 
downwards. With her I have entered into a 
fell and secret conspiracy against the first prin- 
ciples of political economy — she supplies me with 



62 MY GARDENER 

eggs which she buys, and I pay her, for every 
dozen, one penny above the market price. I 
dare not breathe this politico-economical offence 
abroad, but I hope it may cause many a drear 
spook of the economical schools, fidgety, wan- 
dering, unquiet nights. The quantity of eggs 
consumed in my little household is enormous. 
Custard is a standing dish, and omelette a daily 
piatto. Caterina speaks of me as a benefactor, 
believes it too in a confused, reasonless fashion, 
and I have given up attempting to undeceive 
her. She never speaks without weeping, and 
can, I verily believe, weep with one eye at a 
time. Her tears are wonderful. Each is such 
a marvellous clear dewdrop. I watch them, 
with a fascinated stare, ooze out and run down 
her fat face, and disappear and dry up utterly by 
some strange quality, before half their piteous 
journey's done. She has but one long tooth left 
in the front of her old mouth, and round it, as 
the pearly drops course down, she whiffles strange 
incantations charged with blessings for my sick 
soul's weal. 

It was this old serving-wench of Ceres who 
was the first woman that ever gave me a bunch 
of flowers. In some foolish, unguarded moment 
of expansion I had told Benedetto that the 
morrow was my birthday. The news spread 
abroad. In the morning Caterina and Paolo, 
dressed in their poor best for the occasion, the 



A BIRTHDAY PRESENT 63 

old dame bearing a mighty pyramidal bouquet of 
flowers (stolen, I rather suspect, by a gardener 
friend, from some rich garden that would never 
miss them), stood bashful and happy in the little 
hall. Tied by a blue silk riband to the solid stem 
of the bouquet was a card bearing the inscrip- 
tion : " Al nostro amatissimo padrone con mille 
felici augurj da Paolo e Caterina." I was poor 
in my thanks. Anglo-Saxon awkwardness took 
possession of me, and something like a Tuscan 
lump rose up in my throat. Poor dear souls ! so 
much love and kindly courtesy in return for a 
miserly pittance of pay and the brokenest refuse 
of bits. Assuredly there is some finer quality 
in the grossest Tuscan clay which is wanting 
even in the better sorts of human clay in other 
countries. 

Paolo's whole life is from my point of view 
heroic, for he belongs to the elect who have their 
purgatory here instead of hereafter. But there 
was a day in his life when, under my roof, he 
became the popular hero of the hour. Jack 
Curtis, his wife, and small boy from England 
were staying with me at the time. Dick, the 
small boy, is at the fascinating age of seven, 
and the most charming of companions. I was 
delighted when he was once or twice trusted 
alone in the house with me. On one of those 
days I sat smoking a contemplative pipe at the 
open garden door, regarding the heraldic dogs, 



64 MY GARDENER 

while Master Dick was in and out of the house 
romping, exploring, and enjoying himself vastly. 
Presently I heard a crash and a loud child's cry, 
followed by a terrible stillness. I flew into the 
garden. At the kitchen window was the blanched, 
terror-stricken face of the cook, staring in para- 
lysed horror at the well beneath the window. I, 
too, gave a cry. The well is boarded over, and 
in the middle there is a trap-door, which I saw 
had disappeared. I realised what had happened, 
and rushed forward. Gazing in an agony of fear 
down the narrow aperture, I saw little Dick 
thirty feet below me in the dank darkness, his 
little white face turned pathetically up to the sun- 
light, his hands clutched tightly round a metal 
pipe that ran down the side of the well. The 
boy's extraordinary self-possession gave me nerve 
at a moment when I felt panic coming down upon 
me. "Get me out!" shouted the plucky little 
beggar up to me. But how to do it? I con- 
templated jumping, but saw that I should jump 
on the top of him, so narrow was the well. " It's 
cold ! " he shouted again. " Get me out ! " 

At that moment I heard behind me the hasty 
patter of bare feet on the brick path. Paolo, 
whose existence I had forgotten, was up the fig 
tree and had seen everything. He flew up, 
armed already with a rope — the clothes line it 
proved to be. Benedetto, attracted by the noise, 
had come out. He and I held one end of the 



"HEARTRENDING INCIDENT" 65 

line, and Paolo went down — how I saw not. He 
tied up little Dick securely, and Benedetto and 
I hauled him up, while Paolo took his turn of 
hanging on to the metal pipe. Then we let down 
the rope again, and Paolo came up in his monkey 
fashion. I poured half a glass of Marsala down 
Master Dick's throat, had him put in a hot bath, 
and by the time his father and mother came 
back, the young rascal was romping in the 
hall, absolutely without bruise or scath. Small 
wonder that the good townsfolk thought him 
saved by a miracle, and gave the glory of it to 
Our Lady of Succour, whose miraculous image 
they venerate on the hills close by. 

But Benedetto had rushed off to recount the 
marvellous event at the office of the local paper, 
and next morning there appeared a flaming 
article headed " Heartrending incident ; an Eng- 
lish child saved from drowning by a heroic 
gardener." It was thus that popular admiration 
pierced the mantle of Paolo's humility, and made 
him for the moment the hero of the hour. 

It is since this event that I have seriously 
thought of withdrawing from the town to the 
country, where houses with large gardens are 
cheap, and where I shall be able to attach to 
myself for ever the loyal services and honest 
loving hearts of Paolo and his wife Caterina. 



VI 

MY VETTURINO 

Cabmen play a very important part in Tuscan 
life, and they are perhaps the most genial class 
of this genial clime. Even in a city of a hundred 
thousand inhabitants, if you are a settler there, 
you attach to yourself a particular vetturino and 
employ no other. He calls for orders every 
morning if you are a great cab-rider, or you 
send to the rank and leave orders for him with 
his bitterest rival should he himself be absent, 
and they are always safely delivered. He be- 
comes almost a member of your household ; with 
such fervour does he serve you, and, by an art- 
fully suggested exclusiveness, you and you only, 
that it really seems as if you were keeping a 
horse and carriage free of bother and expense. 
Carriages I should have said, for every Tuscan 
cabman keeps two cabs, a closed and comfort- 
able growler, for use when the bitter tramontana 
blows, and a natty, smart, open calash screened 
with canvas curtains, for use in the fierce heat 
of the Tuscan dog-days. Cabs in Tuscany are 
under the jurisdiction of the municipality, who fix 

66 



THE HAPPIEST STORY-TELLERS 67 

the tariff, a livre for a journey of any length in 
this city, which is three miles across, and a livre 
and a half if you take a cab by the hour. But 
no one save a stranger thinks of paying the tariff 
rate ; most cabmen gladly take sixty or seventy 
centimes for a corso, and do but stand by the 
tram-rails and seem to be waiting for the hated 
tram, and there are few cabmen who will not 
dash up and offer to take you for half a livre. 

They are skilful drivers, these Tuscan vetturini, 
for they have attained the art of an alarming 
dash and recklessness of career which is showy, 
and yet never results in mishap. They use the 
whip freely in their mad career, but only to 
crack it in mid-air as a warning to vehicles and 
pedestrians who may be coming down the side 
streets, and as an expression of their joy in life 
and of pride in the distinguished burden — your- 
self — they are bearing. They believe in but 
one evil maxim — and that is sometimes open to 
defence — that it is lawful to fleece the foreigner 
if he is foolish enough to let them do it. Of all 
classes, they are the most ready at chaff and 
repartee, the best conversationalists, and the 
happiest story-tellers. You could scarcely have 
brighter company than a Tuscan vetturino, nor 
need you ever fear over-familiarity or presump- 
tion if you encourage him to talk. All the lower 
classes in Tuscany are ladies and gentlemen, 
full of discretion, tact, and good manners — a 



68 MY VETTURINO 

circumstance which adds much to the delight of 
life in a Tuscan town. 

Beniamino is my cabman's name, but as every 
popular cabman is sopranominato or nicknamed, 
so Beniamino is more usually called " Grillo," 
or the grasshopper, perhaps because he always 
vaults on and off his box without touching the 
wheel. He is a cheery, good-for-nothing rascal, 
with no end of virtues, the bright blue eye and 
ruddy countenance of a popular naughty boy, 
and a grown-up and still increasing family. 

This is how I came to attach him. At first, 
through ignorance or a British love of independ- 
ence, I employed no one vetturino, but was in- 
differently served by all and sundry, by Beniamino 
amongst others. One day I met the rascal on 
foot. He stopped me respectfully ; with melan- 
choly downcast look and tears in his blue eyes 
he produced a dirty schedule with many names 
and trifling sums inscribed upon it. His poor 
horse had dropped down dead, he said, and all 
the noble gentlemen of the city, all the Conti and 
Commendatori and Cavalieri, were subscribing to 
buy him another. Would not my lordship, too, 
whose goodness of heart was in every mouth, con- 
tribute a trifle ? I believed the knave to be lying, 
but he was irresistible. I gave him two livres. 

About three weeks after this he passed me 
from behind in a lonely road, once more on the 
box of his cab. With his whip he pointed in 



BENIAMINO'S INVITATION 69 

pride to a new cream-coloured mare, an absurd 
animal with thick arched neck and hollow back, 
that seemed to have walked out of one of Pintur- 
richio's frescoes. Was I going home ? Would 
I not try his new horse ? I preferred to walk, I 
answered surlily. He hopped from his box and 
opened the cab door. I must, he said, really try 
his new horse, which was the best and swiftest in 
the city. Again he was irresistible, and I let 
him drive me home a mile or more. But at my 
house door as I produced a livre, he surprised 
me by making ready to drive off. I was a 
signore of heart, he said, and had helped him in 
the hour of need. I had only honoured him too 
much by trying his new horse. It was grace- 
fully done, and with all the delicacy of fine, old- 
fashioned, high-bred courtesy. 

" Beniamino," I said, calling him back sternly. 

" Signore ? " 

" I have no regular cabman and want one. 
Will you be my man ? " 

" O signore ! " His heart was too full for 
speech, the ready tears stood in his eyes, but 
quickly recovering himself, he leapt on his box 
with a polite bow and drove off at a galloping 
pace, cracking his whip unceasingly as a vent to 
his delight and contentment in the great good 
news. 

Beniamino had served me for a year or more, 
fairly well : there are better cabmen in the town, 



70 MY VETTURINO 

I know, but none altogether so engaging. I 
knew nothing of cab tariffs in these early green- 
horn days {minckione, they call a greenhorn in 
Tuscany), and though I never paid more than a 
livre for a ride, in all things else, as I now know, 
I grossly overpaid him. It was after about a 
year of this fleecing, that he stood one day in my 
hall waiting to see me. He had come on foot 
without his cab. Never have I seen Merry 
Andrew so transformed to gloom and sheer de- 
spondency. He was twiddling his soft hat 
rapidly in his fingers. His blue eyes wandered 
nervously round the hall, and rested anxiously on 
my right hand as if he expected to find a horse- 
whip there. 

"Signore?" he began. His hat was going 
round at a great rate. 

"Well, Beniamino, what is it?" I queried; 
" I do not want you to-day." 

"It's not that, signore " He looked at the 

marble floor in the hope that it might gape and 
swallow him, and round and round went the hat 
in ever swifter circles. I began to divine what 
it was. The Pinturrichian horse had in his turn 
dropped down dead, or Beniamino's father had 
died, or his bread-winning son had gone to hos- 
pital. He had come to beg I was sure. I liked 
the rogue, and was quite ready to help him ; I 
admired his seeming modesty and confusion, and 
answered kindly — 



GRILLO'S CONFESSION 71 

" Come, what is it, Beniamino ? Are you in 
trouble ? We are old friends now, and I will 
willingly help you if I can." 

It was when I called him "friend" that he 
groaned aloud, ana" looked more and more 
miserably ashamed and contrite ; looked, too, 
all round about to see if Heaven and the Ma- 
donna would not deliver him from his present 
horrible position. 

"It is not that, caro signore," he answered 
ruefully. "The fact is, signoria, — you have be- 
come such a good citizen — one of us, in fact, if 
your lordship will allow me to say so — I can bear 
it no longer — I confess it — I have charged you 
too much all this year — I have treated you like a 
forestiere, and made you pay the tariff and more. 
But do not abandon me for that, kind signore — 
I will serve you as no other signore is served, and 
never again will I take a penny more from you 
than a good citizen would give me." 

He was literally kneeling before me with 
clasped hands and sad remorseful mien, while I 
was doing what I could to keep a stern counte- 
nance in the presence of this curious display of 
honesty, knavery, penitence, and affection. I 
dismissed him with a severe lecture, under which 
he writhed terribly, and I threatened for the 
future to put him on half-pay, a prospect which 
seemed to fill him with the greatest delight. I 
could not for the life of me be seriously angry 



72 MY VETTURINO 

with the transparent knave : he is altogether irre- 
sistible. 

Things balance and adjust themselves wonder- 
fully in Tuscany, but always seemingly with a 
handsome figure to your credit. A man irritates 
you with some little vice, and, before you have 
time to feel the full effects of the smart, salves 
the sore with the balsam of some unexpected 
virtue. Beniamino overcharged me the first 
year ; I underpaid him the second. Then we 
were quits. But in the third year and the fourth, 
I have continued to underpay him. Who, then, 
is the greater sinner ? But I must do as other 
good citizens do : custom is very potent in old 
Etruria. 

When a Tuscan is in your service, be it never 
so informally, he becomes a pattern of honour 
and honesty if you use him well. I would trust 
Beniamino alone in my study if the floor were 
strewn with broad gold pieces. Indeed, I often 
put him in a position to rob my house at his 
leisure. The Tuscan latch-key is something of 
the size of a Caribbean club, useful enough in 
braining a highwayman, but too cumbersome for 
any known pocket. When I go to a dance on 
a hot summer's night without any overcoat, it 
would be necessary to carry the key in my hand, 
and leave it with the flunkey in exchange for 
a number. Instead, I hand it to Beniamino, 
who might easily lose it to an accomplice, and, 



A POPULAR FAVOURITE 73 

with the servants in bed, my house might be 
leisurely rifled. It is laughable at 3 a.m. to see 
him produce the key from under his box seat 
and softly undo my door for me with a broad 
grin and a cheery whispered, " Felicissima notte, 
signorial " 

Beniamino is a great popular favourite. 
Mightily beloved of children is this big boy of 
forty-eight, and being, in his manner at least, 
somewhat of a gay Lothario, it is easy to see 
that cooks and waiting-women are made very 
mirthful by a word from him. The least virtuous 
Tuscan in my service, I yet confess that the mere 
thought of losing him causes me a pang, and 
whatsoever his present and future shortcomings 
may be, he is likely to remain my vetturino for 
ever, since I should not know how to shake off 
this cheery, happy, affectionate creature. He 
has given me too many proofs of it already : the 
rascal is entirely irresistible. 



VII 

THE POOR IDIOT 

Beggars are one of the great charms of existence 
in Tuscany. They are picturesque, cheery, well- 
mannered ; superlative actors ; superb studies in 
the physiological and psychological aspects of 
poverty ; accomplished and varied conversa- 
tionalists ; and they have withal a wealth and 
power of benediction so strong and efficacious, 
that it really seems to bear fruit in your own 
most hungry and poverty-stricken soul. 

At first you remember the dignity and the 
irrefragability of the maxims of Anglo-Saxon 
political economy, and angrily resent all beggars ; 
in return they give you unpaid lessons in bon- 
homie and good manners ; and in the end you 
succumb to them. They serve their purposes. 
They help to keep alive in you the good habit 
of indiscriminate giving which Poor Laws and 
Charity Organisations are apt to choke out of 
your soul under the leaden skies of Cockneydom. 
They make so much of you, too ; they have such 
a happy way of making you feel your own honour 
and dignity, that you begin to bless Will Shake- 



UNBLUSHING BEGGARY 75 

speare for having taught you that a man's best 
deserts still merit him a whipping, and the less 
men deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. 
And so, naturally, you begin to use them after 
your own honour and dignity, and the honour 
and dignity of a well-conditioned gentleman seem 
to require that he should give a two-centime 
piece to every tattered rascal who asks an alms 
of him. If you have not got it, say, Non cho 
nulla, povertiomo: — un altra volta — I've not got 
anything, poor fellow — another day — and you 
may pass on your way without further molesta- 
tion and be sure of the same fervent blessing as 
if you had given. Or — what the beggar much 
prefers — you may say that you have nothing less 
than a twenty-centime piece of nickel or a one- 
lira note, and he will fish up the exact change for 
you from the secrets of his spacious, well-filled 
pockets. 

Of course the system of unblushing beggary 
would never answer among Teutons or Saxons 
or Scandinavians : among them people would 
take to it simply because it paid. Few Tuscans 
are so degraded as to take to it merely because 
it is profitable : beggars are composed of a small 
class of the generally unregenerate, of another 
small class who have lacked the moral grit to 
grapple with adversity, and of a large class that 
is physically so disabled as to be incapable of 
work. There is really no great harm in Tuscan 



76 THE POOR IDIOT 

mendicancy : it keeps the workhouses emptier. 
People do not grudge their doit : it helps to 
keep down the rates and check municipal pro- 
digality. 

My favourite beggar is a person of unusual 
intelligence, who has the barefaced impudence to 
call himself "the poor idiot" {il povero scemo). 
Perhaps it is not so very barefaced after all, for 
with long practice and a rare skill he has acquired 
the make-up, gait, speech, and general deportment 
of a hopeless, drivelling imbecile, and that with 
an art so consummate that no practised actor 
could ever hope to touch him on his own ground. 
His walk alone must have taken a world of 
thinking out. He shuffles, of course, but in a 
series of serpentine curves that baffle description. 
He is on and off the pavement every half-second, 
always with the same meandering, tortuous, shuf- 
fling gait. Often you expect to see him knocked 
down by some wild careering cab, but a con- 
volution occurs at the saving moment, and he 
grins from the gutter at the departing charioteer. 
His grin is, perhaps, the most effective feature 
of his stock-in-trade ; he grins idiotically all 
across his grimy visage, he grins with his eyes 
and with the lines about his eyes, he grins with 
his large nostrils and lop-ears, and with his 
wrinkled intellectual brow. Ordinarily he carries 
a rickety basket filled with meaningless billets 
and chips of wood ; at other times, slung over his 



AN IDIOT BUT NO FOOL 77 

shoulder, a sooty sable sack, into the depths of 
which no man has ever penetrated or cared to 
spy. He munches much : a full mouth adds 
pertinency to his idiot mutterings, and imbecility 
to his multifold grin. In short, as he squats 
there, basking in the Tuscan sun, crooning his 
witless drivel, munching and mumbling and rail- 
ing on Lady Fortune in set crazy terms, he 
seems the perfect portrait of a blinking idiot and 
lunatic lean-witted fool. 

For a good full year I believed him to be a 
genuine addlepate. One day his sense of humour 
threw him momentarily off his guard, and I dis- 
covered that he was really a creature with a more 
than ordinary stock of native mother-wit. I had 
rung the bell at my door and was waiting in the 
street for admittance, when the " poor idiot " 
gyrated down upon me with his snuffling, " Spare 
a centesimo for the poor idiot, signore ! " 

" Let us see," I said, feeling in my ticket- 
pocket, "whether I have anything for the poor 
blind man" {ciecd). The mistake was inadver- 
tent quite. 

" Idiot, signore, idiot ! " (scemo) he answered 
reproachfully, correcting me. And then I knew 
and saw for the first time that he was no idiot. 
I saw that he read and understood the look in 
my eyes, and I read and understood the look in 
his eyes, and saw to the full that he enjoyed the 
jest of preferring idiocy to blindness and of re- 



78 THE POOR IDIOT 

proving me for attributing to him physical in- 
firmity rather than mental. 

"Why, thou rascal!" I cried, "thou'rt no idiot 
at all ! " 

" Ma sissignore, sissignore ! I have ever been 
weak in the wits." 

"Not a bit of it! 'Tis I who am the greater 
idiot for having thought thee a veritable imbecile 
all this long while ! " 

" Ma nossignore, no signoria! Indeed I am a 
bit deficient ! " 

"And I am the greater idiot," I continued, 
"for that I slave and work whilst thou enjoyest 
in full idleness the luxury of playing the fool ! " 

The "povero scetno" was hugely tickled, and 
grinned all over his foolish face. I gave him a 
piece of nickel to show him that I should not 
withdraw my patronage because he was no real 
idiot. Indeed I have since then much increased 
my alms for the sake of bandying words with 
this exquisite fool. But on our next meeting he 
had assumed again his skilfully contrived mask 
of imbecility, and he seldom lets it fall. 

It is a delightful sensation to call a man an 
idiot and yet know all the while that you are 
paying him a compliment sweet to his ears and 
advantageous to his walk in life. We engage 
in a very subtly conceived badinage : I rail at 
imbecility in the full pride of my right wits, he 
with maudlin good-humour mocks at the fancied 



INNER HISTORY OF THE RASCAL 79 

boon of sanity. A " deep contemplative " fool, 
he affects to think my sanity as much an acquired 
art as his own idiocy, and much less well done. 
Hence it follows that I should have proved the 
better actor if I had essayed the role of shallow- 
brain instead of the staid, pharisaical part of 
rational sage. But all this is conveyed by looks 
and grins and a fatuous treatment of my ques- 
tions ; it is seldom that I catch him in the 
babbling mood, when he moralises on the times, 
apishly, but with sagacity and keen racy humour. 
He does not forget that he has a part to play, 
that I know too much already, that I may turn 
traitor and betray him, and take out of his mouth 
the bread that he contrives to earn by the want 
of his wits. 

Of course the "ftovero scemo" is a very repre- 
hensible person. I suppose him to be a creature 
with a more than ordinary loathing for manual 
labour, and with intellectual faculties that he has 
not known how to use for the want of instruc- 
tion. Being able-bodied he could not long beg 
with success, if he were also compos mentis ; and 
so to keep body and soul together in inglorious 
ease, he feigns to be diseased in his wits. This 
I take it is the true inner history of the unprin- 
cipled rascal ; but who that for half a doit can 
revel with him in all the luxury of fine-drawn 
paradox would wish him clapped under the hatches 
of a workhouse or set to breaking stones upon 



80 THE POOR IDIOT 

the road? Of an infinite cunning and natural 
good manners, he molests no man and conciliates 
the police, and in his begging he is unostentatious 
and free from all persistency. And so being at 
the same time irredeemable and harmless, it is 
surely better for the humbling of our pride that 
he should continue to sit on the doorsteps, railing 
at vainglorious sanity and mumbling the praises 
of despised imbecility. 



VIII 

THE VERY REV. CANON DOMENICO 
PUCCI, D.D. 

(Domestic Prelate to his Holiness) 

I had told myself many a time that it was spend- 
thrift folly to travel first-class. I even asseve- 
rated continually the fatuous lie that second-class 
was quite as nice as first. But to-day, a fit of 
good conduct being upon me, I was firmly re- 
solved to go second. 

The queue at the ticket-office was long, my 
place in it very far back, the ticket-clerk, even 
for a Tuscan railway official, unusually slow. 
There were but five minutes to spare when I 
got to the window. 

"A second single to Pistoia, please!" I said, 
wincing as with an effort I got out the objection- 
able word "second." 

The ticket-clerk was grieved but polite. " I 
only distribute third-class tickets here, signore," 
he answered; "have the complacency to step to 
the adjoining window." 

I glanced at the adjoining window. There 

81 F 



82 CANON DOMENICO PUCCI, D.D. 

was another long queue there, another very de- 
liberate clerk. If I took up my place at the 
end of the tail I should certainly miss the train. 
There was no time to hesitate, and so in despair 
I plunged, feeling very heroic indeed. "Then 
favour me," I said, "with a third single to 
Pistoia ! " 

But the prospect was not alluring. There are 
no padded third-class carriages on the Adriatic 
line, A number of hillmen back from the winter's 
work in Corsica were returning to their mountain 
homes above Pistoia. Each carried a large sack 
of unfragrant wearing apparel ; some of them had 
dogs between their knees ; all of them spades, 
hoes, rakes, walking-staves, great gourds, and a 
variety of impedimenta that littered the carriages 
across and across. It was near the dinner-hour 
too ; the windows would be all tight shut, and, 
oh horror ! garlic would be consumed, and its 
redolence would remain. I walked up and down 
the train anxiously spying into every carriage. 
Near the engine I noticed a compartment nearly 
empty, and I noticed, what decided me to enter, 
a priest in one corner of it, for the Tuscan peasant 
still respects the priest, and I felt he would be 
some sort of protection. 

I got in and sat down opposite to him. He 
was deep in the Florence Ultramontane paper, 
the Unita Cattolica, but raised his eyes as I 
seated myself, and acknowledged my presence. 



A PLEASING PICTURE 83 

I bowed in return, but he was already back in 
his paper, so I had nothing better to do than 
to observe and study him. He was an old man, 
with close-cropped hair and the mildest pair of 
old eyes that I have ever seen. His forehead 
was low and narrowish, but the nose was large, 
aquiline, and finely cut, indicating intellect and 
a certain firmness of purpose. He was refined- 
looking to the finger-tips, nay, aristocratic, with 
the clear mark of old family stamped on his 
whole being. What struck me was the extreme 
neatness and cleanliness of his apparel. The 
white Roman collar and white cuffs were spot- 
less, the steel buckles on his shoes shone 
brightly, the long black cassock with its myriad 
buttons, the broad-brimmed plush hat, seemed 
cared for and well brushed. A little bit of 
Roman purple silk, showing at the top of the 
cassock below the collar, agreeably set off the 
thin, white, wrinkled face. I could not help 
thinking what a pleasing picture he would make 
against the red velvet cushions of an Adriatic 
first-class compartment, and, priest though he 
was, how much more natural it would have been 
for such a refined gentleman to be there. I 
wished that we were both there. Also I wished 
to talk to him, but knew not how to begin. 

Before we reached Pisa he neatly folded his 
paper and commenced to gaze out of the window 
in an upward direction, as if he were more con- 



84 CANON DOMENICO PUCCI, D.D. 

cerned with the things of Heaven than the 
beauties of the landscape. His thoughts were 
pleasant evidently ; a faint smile played about 
the lips, and the whole face reflected a good 
conscience and a sanctified interior. Death 
might come and welcome — that, too, the face 
seemed to convey. The pale blue eyes, I saw, 
were milder and more beautiful than I had 
supposed ; they spoke in the gentlest manner of 
clemency and illimitable loving-kindness. Yes, 
I really must get into conversation with him. 

But there was no time, even if my unready 
tongue had found a suitable phrase, for he 
produced a big breviary and began to read in 
it earnestly, almost audibly, his lips moving the 
whole time. A pang of annoyance shot through 
me. I wanted more and more to talk to him. 
" You are reading that big book to impress 
me," I said to myself, for it is the layman's 
birthright to suspect every ecclesiastic of hypoc- 
risy. "And you are moving your lips to 
impress me," I went on. "Only it doesn't. I 
should think more of you if you were less 
ostentatious." Charitable thoughts truly, and 
how unjust I now know well enough. The 
Catholic Church obliges her priests to read the 
Canonical Hours every day, and the priest may 
not read the Office to himself; if not actually 
said aloud, he is at least obliged to form every 
word with his lips, and that alone was the 



WHY DID I NOT SPEAK TO HIM? 85 

reason why the good man opposite me was 
moving his lips. 

As the train lumbered into Lucca Station, the 
priest closed his book and crossed himself. Then 
he rose to leave us. From underneath the seat, 
willing hands preventing him, his bag was 
dragged forth, a real carpet bag with mauve 
roses on a black ground, and with a slight bow 
to me and a cheery buona sera and buon viaggio 
to the whole company, he alighted, and I saw 
him no more. Why did I not speak to him? 
If I had, what would his conversation have 
been like? If I had, I should have prevented 
him from the better entertainment of saying 
his Office. I went on musing about him for a 
while, but he passed out of my mind and 
thoughts altogether at the sight of the rich 
beauties of the Valley of the Nievole, which the 
train had now entered. 

I returned home from Pistoia a fortnight later, 
and on the afternoon of the same day noticed an 
unusual stir in front of the Cathedral in the big 
piazza. The lintel of the main entrance was 
draped with black, silver-fringed hangings. A 
continual stream of people of all classes was 
passing in and out of the Cathedral. There 
was a hush upon them, and a look of concern 
in every face. What could be the matter, I 
wondered ? 



86 CANON DOMENICO PUCCI, D.D. 

"What is the matter?" I asked of an old 
beggar-woman who was seated on the steps 
lustily beseeching the passing biwni Cristiam 
for alms. 

"Do you not know, signore?" she replied. 
"The Canonico Pucci is dead!" A feeling 
groan escaped her lips. 

" And who was the Canonico Pucci ? " I 
inquired. 

The woman looked up at me in amazement. 
"You are a stranger, signore, or you are rich. 
Otherwise you would know. He was the friend 
of the poor, a saint, a man of a great family, 
who stripped himself of everything for the poor. 
He was poorer than the poor for all that he 
looked such a great gentleman. We beggars 
took all we could get when he was rich, but 
for a long time we have hidden away when 
we saw him coming. He would give us his 
last soldo, and you dare not refuse — he was such 
a gran signore. But often he had not food to 
eat. He was a real saint, I tell you, and people 
have found it out now that he is dead. His 
body is lying in state in there. Go in and see ; 
he looks such an angel, bless his dear face." 

I dropped a coin into her hand and stood 
awhile under the portico, listening to the con- 
versation of animated groups. 

" What nonsense, I tell you ! He rich ! Why, 
the Canons of the Duomo get but four hundred 



THE FRIEND OF THE POOR 87 

francs a year. They say there were but five 
soldi found in his room when he died." 

" But he was of the family of the Counts Pucci 
of Prato, and he was a prelate of his Holiness." 

"Maybe! But he was a prodigal, only he 
spent all his patrimony on the poor as you or 
I might do on pleasures. You couldn't trust him 
with money for himself. He had a hole in his 
hand, as the proverb says. He used to keep 
twenty families going out of the allowance his 
cousin the Count made him, and when the Count 
found out what he was doing, he stopped it. As 
for being a prelate of his Holiness, that brings 
you in no money. I tell you he was living on a 
franc and a half a day, and giving charity out of 
that!" 

"But I have been in his comfortable sitting- 
room ! " said another voice. 

"Nonsense! that wasn't his sitting-room. He 
had but one room, a small bedroom with a little 
iron bedstead in it. The padrona di casa used to 
lend him her best sitting-room to receive people 
in. He was very proud, was the Canonico 
Pucci. He loved to be poor, but not to seem 
poor. He was a very fine gentleman, the 
Canonico ; look how neat and bright his clothes 
always were." 

"Well, the truth is coming out now. There 
were many who thought him rich." 

" The poor knew well enough he wasn't." 



88 CANON DOMENICO PUCCI, D.D. 

''Nonsense, I tell you! The Sisters never 
paid him a halfpenny for his services as Chaplain 
to the Children's Hospital." 

" The Sisters gave him a bit of carpet for his 
bedroom, but he sold it for the poor. The 
Mother Superior's just found it out." 

" There'll be weeping and wailing among the 
children at the Spedalino to-day. They say he 
dearly loved the little ones." 

" They say it was cancer he died of. And no 
one knew of it. He hadn't an arm-chair to sit in, 
or a bit of fire through the winter. And he 
should have been having good nourishing food. 
But you couldn't do anything for him— even the 
Sisters couldn't." 

"He's lived poor, but he'll have the funeral of 
a Cardinal. All the Confraternities are coming, 
they say, and all the Orders and the parochial 
committees." 

" Well, his soul's in Paradise, that's certain ! " 

My pulses stirred by this Hosanna of highest 
praise, I passed into the Cathedral. What an 
immense stream of people, to be sure ! What 
excitement ! What a number of poor and ragged 
creatures! They cannot keep silent. There is 
a hum of talk sounding irreverent in the sacred 
building, but being in reality only a hymn of 
praise. At the far end of the Cathedral I saw a 
tall, stately catafalque of black and gold, and 
underneath it, on a black draped bier, an open 



THE SWEET SLEEP OF DEATH 89 

coffin in which lay the body of an ecclesiastic. 
Six towering candlesticks with lighted candles 
stood round the catafalque. I neared it with 
difficulty. And then a pang gripped my heart 
and a mist came over my eyes. I might have 
guessed it surely from the disjointed talk I had 
heard a moment before. But I did not. It 
came as a surprise, a shock, and it left me with 
the heartache. There before me, clad in purple 
silk cassock and grey fur amess, the buckles on 
his shoes shining brightly in the flickering candle- 
light, a Divinity Doctor's biretta on his head, and 
a silver crucifix pressed in the thin hands clasped 
across his breast — there before me lay in the 
sweetest sleep of death the old priest with whom 
I had travelled in a third-class carriage little more 
than a fortnight before ! I could not stop to 
gaze long at the sweet, placid face, to wonder 
what words would have come across the smiling 
lips had I spoken to him, to reproach myself for 
my hard thoughts of him : the constant stream 
carried me forcibly back to the door. 

" There'll be a grand funeral to-night. Shall 
you go, Gianni ? " 

"Eh, sfidol And you?" 

"Eh! I should think so!" 

And so shall I, I resolved. 

I got back to the Cathedral at eight o'clock. 
There was no getting in for the crowds. But I 
could look in, and I saw that the bishop himself, 



9 o CANON DOMENICO PUCCI, D.D. 

in black cope and plain white mitre, was officiat- 
ing. The coffin, still on the bier, was closed now, 
and covered with many garlands of flowers. 
There were wreaths, too, hanging on the four 
posts of the catafalque. Voices were chanting the 
Libera : the whole of the vast crowd took it up : — 



* 



B B- 



Li ■ be ■ ra me, Do - mi - ne, de mor - te 



se - ter • na in di - e il - la tre -men - da : 



% -^-m ^ ^Tr ^ -i. " 



, . — I 

Quan- do cce • li mo - ven- di sunt et ter - ra. 



Dum v6 



ne-ris ju-di - ca 



re sae - culum per i-gnem.^.Tremensfactussume-go 






-B — B — B; 



^HH ■ jg— p 



et ti • me - o, dum disscus - si - o ve - ne - rit, 



■ ! ■■■■ ta ir— ■■-' ' — "m 



±fc 



5 



at- que ven - tu - ra i - ra. Qaan -do cce - li 



THE LIBERA 



9i 



4-fe Eg ^ — S 


— "5 — h— [~ s — B 11 ^ Hi 


— "f — Si — ^ 


1 

— s — 


4 


mo - ve 


n - di sunt et ter • ra. $\ Di - es il - la, 


-8- 


* 


m es[ «f»* 








s_ 


nsa ** 






■ ■-■n ■ ■ 


1 




■^ •■ ™ 


■ | 








j 

di - es 


i • ra% ca - la -mi-ta - tis et mi - se - ri - as, 


5 


*» 




M «9 


mi i fat 


1 


«(, 


ES H 




Bsgl » m tSrV J" n 


1 




Itjjjj D KB fca 





di - es ma - gna et a - ma - ra val - de. 



+£ 



Dum ve - • - ne-ris ju-di - ca 



re, 



*£ 



H B I HT H 



Sae - cu-lum per i - gnem. Re-qui- em se - ternam 



5 seZB 



^ 



do-na e - is, Do - mi-ne: et lux per-pe-tu-a 



lu - ce - at e - is. 



Ky- ri • e e - le - i - son. Chri-ste e - le - i - son. 



szzrzzH 



Ky -ri-e e * 16 - i - son. 



92 CANON DOMENICO PUCCI, D.D. 

I HB J 



5 



1-g — B- 



-«- 



Pa - ter 



no - ster (secreto). 



^ 



f. Et ne nos inducas in tenta 
1^. Sed libera nos a . 



tio 
ma 



nem. 
lo. 



f. A porta ; in 

Ij?. Erue, Domine, animam e 



fe 



n. 

jus. 



^9^ 



-H B- 



Re - qui - e - scat in pa - ce. ty. A - men. 



f. D6mine exaudi orationem 
ty. Et clamor meus ad te 



me 
v6 



am. 
niat. 




Et cum Spi-ri 



Oremus. 

Deus, cui proprium est misereri semper, et parcere : te supplices 
exoramus pro anima famuli tui Dominici Sacerdotis, quam hodie 
de hoc sasculo migrare jussisti, ut non tradas earn in manus inimici, 
neque obliviscaris in finem, sed jubeas earn a Sanctis Angelis sus- 
cipi, et ad patriam paradisi perduci : ut quia in te speravit, et 
credidit, non poenas inferni sustineat, sed gaudia asterna possideat. 
Per Christum Dominum Nostrum. &. Amen. 



A WONDERFUL PROCESSION 93 



-s- 


*-- nwT a 










"f. Requiem seternam dona ei Do - mi - ne. 
3^. Et lux perpetua luceat e i. 


- 


*■* B H 


■a n 1 ■ F« ■ 




»» 




V H 












1 1 







f. Re - qui ■ e - scat in pa - ce. ^?. A - men. 

It seemed needless to pray for the deliverance of 
a soul that must surely be already in Paradise. 

The procession began to form, and the crowds 
poured out of the church. It was a wonderful 
procession. Children of several orphanages, 
Sisters of several Orders, the Sisters of St. 
Vincent of Paul from the Spedalino, with their 
big starched white caps; Brothers of the Archcon- 
fraternity of the Misericordia, in black linen gowns 
and black masks; Brothers of the Purification, with 
their broad white collars, all the parish confra- 
ternities, representatives of many Orders in their 
habits — Friars Minor, Capuchins, Dominicans, 
Crutched Friars, Augustinian Friars, Barnabites, 
and Vallombrosans from the monastery on the hill ; 
a long file of the secular clergy, the priests from 
the Armenian and Greek Uniat Churches, the 
Maronite Chaplain, the Bishop and full Chapter of 
Canons, and closing the procession the state-hearse 
of the Misericordia, smothered in a profusion 
of flowers. Every man and woman in the long 
array carried a flaming torch or candle. Behind 



94 CANON DOMENICO PUCCI, D.D. 

the hearse there walked a multitude of the Canon's 
best friends — the blind, the maimed, the halt, 
the ragged and tattered, the scum and offscour- 
ings of the city, struggling for precedence. From 
the crowd which followed, and the crowds which 
lined the streets, there surged an uncomfortable 
sound of sobbing, which rose to loud-voiced, 
heart-piercing lamentations as the procession 
slowly defiled through the poorer quarters of the 
town. I followed to the city gates, where the 
procession broke up. All the streets of the city 
were animated with the returning crowds, and 
the hosanna of praise continued to swell on every 
side. It had indeed been an imposing demon- 
stration, and all for a man who had never written 
a book, or made a speech, or done a single public 
act ; who the day before had been unknown to 
half the city, whose fame was not of his seeking 
but the creation of the poor, whose only claim 
to public honours was that he had been beloved 
of the poor and had lived like one of them. 

Blessed indeed is the holy land of Tuscany, 
where the love of poverty and its unostentatious 
practice is still a claim to public distinction, and 
where a simple love of the poor and an unfailing 
charity towards them is title sufficient to all the 
pomp and glory of a hero's funeral ! 



THE TUSCAN TONGUE 



THE TUSCAN TONGUE 

(An Entirely Unphilological Disquisition) 

The Tuscan tongue is not easy of acquirement : 
rather is it very difficult. Only the man who 
does not know Italian, said the late Cardinal 
Manning, will call it an easy language. But the 
man entirely innocent of the language is not so 
cocksure as the man with a smattering. It is he, 
rather, who vaunts the easiness of Italian. He 
can get along "all right," he will tell you, and 
the people understand him. So they do, but it 
is thanks to their quick wit, their ready sym- 
pathy, their skill in reading the clumsiest panto- 
mime, and by no means to his own linguistic 
attainments. 

The Tuscan tongue is often, very falsely, called 
the Italian language. There is no Italian lan- 
guage, save in so far as Tuscan is an official 
and literary vehicle. Throughout the length and 
breadth of the kingdom an innumerable number 
of dialects are spoken, some attaining almost to 
the dignity of a language. It suffices to mention 
the Sardinian dialect, the Sicilian, the Neapolitan, 
the Bolognese, the Genoese, the Milanese, the 

97 G 



9 8 THE TUSCAN TONGUE 

Piedmontese, the Venetian — even a Mezzofanti 
would quail before the countless divisions and 
subtly-shaded subdivisions — while outside the 
Kingdom of Italy, as now constituted, there are 
other Italic peoples speaking yet other Italic 
dialects — the patois of Nice and Corsica, the 
dialects of Ticino and Trent and Trieste. To 
illustrate more eloquently than any grammar 
could — Edmondo de Amicis, in the autobiography 
which he has commenced in the Nuova Anto- 
logia, 1 records that being transplanted at the age 
of two from a Genoese to a Piedmontese town, 
he began to acquire the dialect of his new resi- 
dence more speedily than his elders, and at one 
time found himself unable to communicate with 
his mother except through an interpreter. 

But Tuscan is the greatest of all the dialects, 
for it has taken rank in the Peninsula and the 
world as one of the classical languages. That 
which is commonly called the Italian language is 
in reality nothing but the Tuscan dialect, just as 
that which we call the Spanish language is only 
the dialect of the old kingdom of Castile. Dante 
six centuries ago wrote the Divine Comedy in 
the Tuscan dialect. Stupor and amazement at 
the great performance fell upon the whole Penin- 
sula, and in the general admiration the master- 
mind gave a common literary speech to the divided 
Italian nationalities. It is not because Tuscan is 
1 Nuova Antologia, May 16, 1900, fasc. 682, p. 194. 



ONLY A DIALECT 99 

Tuscan, melodious, sonorous, stately, that it is 
now the Italian language, but because Dante 
wrote in the Tuscan dialect, and Petrarch fol- 
lowed hard after, singing sweet songs in the same 
provincial tongue. Mad Dante been born not 
at Florence but in Venice and written in Vene- 
tian, had Petrarch been born not at Arezzo but 
in Naples and written in Neapolitan, there would 
have been two classical languages in Italy to-day, 
just as there are two classical languages, Spanish 
and Portuguese, in the Iberian Peninsula; or if 
the imaginary Dante's greater influence had pre- 
vailed, the modern Italian language would have 
been the Venetian dialect, not the Tuscan. 

And yet the great master's influence was limited. 
He gave a common speech to Italians, but it was 
only very partially accepted. It is the language 
of press and Parliament, of poets and writers, of 
universities and the schools ; it is, of course, the 
spoken language of Tuscany ; all the educated 
classes of other parts of Italy can speak it, though, 
always excepting Rome, they never do among 
themselves. The untravelled Englishman is apt 
to imagine that Italian, that is to say, Tuscan, 
is the everyday spoken language of all Italians 
among themselves right throughout the Penin- 
sula. Such is very far from being the case. Go 
on to the Exchange at Milan, and listen to a 
group of phlegmatic Lombard 'changers : not a 
word of their discourse penetrates your intelli- 



ioo THE TUSCAN TONGUE 

gence, however good a Tuscan scholar you may 
be. Go to a barber's in Bologna : five or six 
customers are waiting to be shaved, and are 
loudly discoursing ; fair Tuscany lies close, just 
beyond the hills ; and yet you seem to have dis- 
covered a country not marked upon the map, 
to have unearthed a language not tabulated by 
philologists, so barbarous, so outlandish is the 
jargon you hear. You land at Genoa, but when 
the boatman opens his mouth a fear comes upon 
you that this can be no Italian port, so unintelli- 
gible are the sounds which he is uttering. Or 
you stroll into the theatre at Venice to hear Zasfo 
in the classic Goldoni's "Sior Todero Brontolon," 
and although you understand some of it, the 
Italian appears to have gone all wrong, for the 
play is writ in the Venetian dialect. 

As for the country dialects outside Tuscany, a 
mountain, a hedge, a running brook, as Sant' 
Albino says, is sufficient to mark off a new lan- 
o-uaoe. This is no exasperation. The late Sio;nor 
Giovanni Papanti, 1 in honour of the fifth centenary 
of Boccaccio, published a volume containing one 
of the stories of the " Decameron," translated into 
about seven hundred different dialects and verna- 

1 Signor Papanti was by profession a shipbroker, but philolo- 
gists owe more than one debt of gratitude to him. The book from 
which I am quoting is entitled, " I parlari in Certaldo alia festa 
del V Centenario di Messer Giovanni Boccaccio. Omaggio di 
Giovanni Papanti.'' Livorno, 1875, pp. 736. Signor Papanti ob- 
tained all his translations locally. 



OTHER DIALECTS 



IOI 



colt, or shades of dialect. The differences are 
bewilderingly astounding. Let us take the first 
word only of the story {dico — I say — a very com- 
mon word), and see how it compares in some of 
the principal dialects : — 



Italian or Tuscan 
Venetian . 
Milanese . 
Piedmontese 
Sardinian (Sassari) 
Sicilian 
Bolognese 
Genoese . 



Dico 

Digo 

JDisi 

Dio 

Diggu 

Dicu 

A degh 



But this is not all. Each dialect is subdivided 
into an infinity of vernacoli. Take the Pied- 
montese dialect, and again keeping to the simple 
first word of Boccaccio's story, let us, with the 
help of Signor Papanti's book, compare the dia- 
lect with a few only of its many vernacoli : — 



Piedmontese Dialect 
Piedmontese Vernacoli: 



lo dio 



Country round Turin 


. Io digh 


Valperga (Canavese) 


. E diso 


Vico Canavese 


. / diou 


Monferrato 


. A die 


Gavi .... 


. A digu 


Alba (town) 


. Mi dijo 


Alba (country districts) . 


. Mi digu 


Saluzzo (country districts) 


. Iv disiis 


Bagnasco 


. I disio 


Cortemiglia . 


. Mi dich 


Mondovl 


. Mi diva 



102 THE TUSCAN TONGUE 

Nay, even in Tuscany itself but little pure 
Tuscan is spoken by the people. Even in 
Tuscany there is an infinity of vernacoli. A 
Florentine aristocrat can tell you in which ward 
of the city lives the popolano with whom he is 
talking ; an Elban shipowner can state at once 
from which of the island villages his sailors come. 
In Leghorn it is most easy to distinguish the 
people who live in that part of the city known 
(on account of its canals) as Venezia. There the 
people, among many peculiarities, substitute "1" 
for "r," and "r" for "1," just as a London 
flunkey drops an "h" or puts on an "h" when 
he shouldn't. For instance, the Livornese Vene- 
ziani say "Galibardi" for "Garibaldi," "dorce 
fal niente" for "dolce far niente," "fa cardo" 
for "fa caldo," "Tulco" for "Turco," and so 
forth. Out of the whole of the seven hundred 
translations in Signor Papanti's work, the one 
that most faithfully resembles the pure Tuscan of 
Boccaccio's day is that representing the peasant 
language of the Pistoiese Apennines. It is here, 
round about San Marcello and Cutigliano, that 
the purest Tuscan is spoken, pure in its language, 
pure in its accent ; and it is here that Manzoni 
and dAzeglio came, comparative foreigners both 
of them, the one a Lombard the other a Pied- 
montese, to acquire the pure language for those 
romances which have delighted all Italy and all 
the world. 



THE QUESTION OF ACCENT 103 

Italy is the land of surprises. Strange it is 
that unity should have come to her from Pied- 
mont, the least Italian of all the Italic Provinces, 
and that her dynasty hails from still further afield, 
from transalpine Savoy, the land which has pro- 
duced Joseph de Maistre, greatest of all French 
stylists, and St. Francis of Sales, whose sweet 
mellifluous tongue laid the foundation of French 
spiritual writing. So recently as 1821 De 
Maistre, writing from Turin to the Marquis 
d'Azeglio, asks if indeed the Torinese be Italians, 
and says that at Florence they are called an 
"amphibious nation," while at Turin (afterwards 
to become the capital of the Kingdom of Italy) 
it was the habit to inquire whether the post 
from Italy had arrived yet. 1 Down to 1859 the 
language spoken in the Turin Parliament was 
French ; it was the language of the Court, of 
society, of diplomacy, of the Sardinian Foreign 
Office, of many newspapers, and Count Solaro 
della Margarita, Charles Albert's foreign minister, 
used as often as not to sign himself " Solar de la 
Marguerite." 

Then there is the question of accent, and 
here occurs just one of those surprises so pecu- 
liarly Italian. The best language is spoken in 
Tuscany, but the best pronunciation is heard 
in Rome, according to the old proverb which 
describes the ideal, lingua Toscana in bocca 

1 CEuvres Computes (Lyons, 1886), vol. xiv. p. 259. 



104 THE TUSCAN TONGUE 

Romance. 1 The Roman pronunciation is less 
harsh than the Tuscan, it is more melodious and 
sonorous, it has no savour of provincialisms. In 
the mouth of a noble Roman, Tuscan attains the 
most delectable sounds of which human speech is 
capable, and becomes a fitting language for the 
City which is the centre of the Universe. The 
noble Roman has, moreover, a great facility in 
languages, and speaks them all — even French — 
with little or no ungrateful accent, whereas the 
Tuscan in general is not over quick at acquiring 
a foreign tongue, while his accent, when he 
speaks French, might cause a Londoner to take 
heart of grace. But Italians on the whole 
speak English remarkably well, and it is quite 
wonderful to hear Florentines and Romans who 
have never been in England using our most idio- 
matic expressions and sonorously rolling forth our 
very latest slang. 

All the other Italian nationalities, except the 
Romans and the Tuscans, speak Italian with a 
strongly marked foreign accent. In the Nea- 
politans and the Venetians this accent is agree- 
able ; in the Milanese, the Genoese, the Bolog- 
nese, harsh and repellent. Of course, if they 
are educated people, they speak their Tuscan 
correctly as far as the language goes, and in 

1 There is another proverb which narrows the ideal still more, 
lingua Sanese in bocca Pistoiese — the speech of Siena and the 
accent of Pistoia. 



TUSCAN A DELIGHTFUL LANGUAGE 105 

that are to be distinguished from the foreigner, 
blundering usually notwithstanding his twenty 
years' residence ; but even correctness of speech 
cannot soften to a Tuscan ear the grating 
drawl of the Bolognese, and perhaps he prefers 
the blundering and floundering of the obvious 
foreigner. 

But I had almost forgot that this chapter is on 
the Tuscan tongue, and not on the Italic dialects. 
Tuscan is an absolutely delightful language. It 
is so specially adapted for asking big favours, for 
humbly returning thanks for them, for excusing 
deficiencies, for evading the point, for a sustained 
and subtle badinage, and — above all — for making 
love. There is that in it which makes all com- 
pliments seem sincere, which magnifies all excel- 
lencies, and softens all defects. On every letter 
you get you are dubbed a Sir Most Illustrious, 
Most Highly Esteemed, Most Worthy or Most 
Distinguished. Frequently an exalted military 
rank is accorded you, or a title of nobility of 
which you have never seen the patent, while it 
is always assumed that you are at least a Knight 
Commander of some Illustrious Order of Chiv- 
alry. Nay, at times, even the grateful title of 
"Excellency" delights your eye upon a soiled 
and illiterate envelope which contains within it 
an astounding catalogue of all the virtues which 
you have not, and appeals, without fear of failing, 
to that " buon cuore " of yours, the subject of 



106 THE TUSCAN TONGUE 

universal marvel, for a trifling alms to succour 
the widow whose husband is still living, or the 
orphan who has lost neither parent. 

Then it is a language which wonderfully tends 
to sharpen the wits. It insists upon your de- 
fining the social station, and, to some extent, the 
character of every man you address. This is a 
great strain upon the luckless stranger, and it is 
well for him that the Tuscans are especially in- 
dulgent to foreigners. From baronet to plough- 
boy, in England, we are all "you." Not so in 
Tuscany. There there are three modes of 
address. First there is Lei, and that, with the 
persistent contrariness of all things Tuscan, is a 
violation of the rules of grammar. Lei is geni- 
tive and dative, and yet it is used as the nomina- 
tive in speaking, and the real nominative (Ella) 
is only used in writing. 1 And Lei is not " you " 
or "thou," not even "he" : it is plain "she." So 
in a sonorous, robust and bellicose language, one 
has to unsex the most virile and belligerent, and 
call every male " her." Lei (she), then, is one 
mode of address ; Voi (you) is another ; Tu 
(thou) is the third ; and thus all humanity is 
divided into Lei, Voi, and Tu. 

But how to classify ? There's the rub. It is 
most difficult when you get near the borderland 
which separates Lei from Voi, and Voi from Tu. 

1 To great swells (pezzi grossi), and on very formal occasions, 
Ella may be used in speech, but it is not conversational language. 



LEI, VOI, AND TU 107 

Lei is given to such of one's superiors as are 
not addressed by some more exalted title (Majes- 
ties, Eminences, Royal Highnesses, Excellencies); 
to one's equals ; to some of one's inferiors, such 
as clerks and the swarming crowd of Govern- 
ment impiegati, petty officers, and the better class 
of shopkeepers. Voi, the usual mode of address 
at Naples, is but little employed in Tuscany. It 
is given to Almighty God, to the Blessed Virgin, 
and to the Saints and Angels. Children, in old- 
fashioned, remote country districts use it as a 
mark of respect to their parents. And it 
serves more potently than the whole repertory 
of Tuscan strong language to reduce a Tus- 
can servant, whose heart you delight with the 
familiar and confidential Tu, to a proper sense 
of her awful and reprehensible misdeeds. Tu, 
the sweet, delightful, logical, affectionate Tu, you 
will give to your servants if you like them, to all 
peasant people as a rule, to your cabman, your 
gardener, your boatman, to the tram-conductor 
who pilots you into town, to the waiter of the 
restaurant where you lunch if his eye is bright 
and genial, to your barber's assistant if he seem 
no formalist, to the dispenser of your morning 
vermouth if you feel in sympathy with him, and 
to all and sundry the beggars whom you may 
honour with your acquaintance and conversation. 
But roughly speaking, all Tuscans are divided 
into Lei and Tu, and the great art consists in 



108 THE TUSCAN TONGUE 

knowing precisely where Lei leaves off and Tu 
begins. 

Very hard, too, upon the poor foreigner is the 
bewildering number of suffixes by which one may 
change the sense of both nouns and adjectives 
for better or for worse in all the nicest grades of 
good and bad. Just a few of these suffixes : one, 
otto, if you desire to magnify (donna, a woman, 
donnone^ an imposingly big woman) ; ino, cino, 
etto, ello, and how many more, if you want to be 
endearing {donnetta^ a dear little woman) ; actio, 
and astro to express a sense of evil (donnaccia, a 
bad woman, a baggage ; filosof astro, a false, shall 
I say an empiric, philosopher). The foreigner, 
if he is wise, will not attempt to learn his accres- 
citivi, diminutivi) vezzeggiativi, and peggiorativi 
from a grammar. He will rather trust to time, 
ear, and observation. With time the use of a 
few of these suffixes will become familiar to him ; 
as to the rest, the plain Anglo-Saxon has no need 
of them, or will blunder if he attempt to apply 
them ; in their full fitness and significance they 
can only be used by the natives whose subtle and 
complex characters have impressed them on the 
language. Just think of it : Beppino means pri- 
marily little Beppe, but it can also mean big 
Beppe. If big Beppe be too muscular and 
strong, if he be likely to prove dangerous and 
tyrannical in his village or slum, his claws are 
clipped for him in early boyhood by simply being 



BEWILDERING SUFFIXES 109 

dubbed Beppino, or dear, gentle, harmless, little 
Beppe. Samson himself could never have used his 
great strength, if from his earliest days he had been 
soothed with the honeyed sobriquet of Sansonino. 
And what shall I say of uccio, which my gram- 
mar tells me expresses "diminution coupled with 
baseness and disdain." So it does ; but it may 
go along with size too, and seek to cover base- 
ness and hide disdain. I will take a Beppuccio 
of my acquaintance. He is a ship-chandler's 
man, indefatigable, and a very reliable messenger, 
will do an errand without hope of reward, has 
most of the qualities of good-nature, but is unin- 
viting in his appearance, ill-clad and not over 
clean, bibulous and pimply as to the face, reeks 
of raw garlic and the chandler's store, shambles 
in his gait and splutters in his speech, and — 
unpardonable crime in Tuscany — frequently gets 
tipsy for days together on rum below proof that 
hails from the Baltic. Such is Beppuccio, and 
his uccio does apply to his stature, it does indi- 
cate his baseness, it does express the general 
disdain ; it does all this, but it does more than 
this, for to him it has been given as a sign that 
the virtues he has do to some extent condone 
his most manifest shortcomings, that his fellow- 
citizens have agreed to overlook his worst 
features, that in fact he is Beppuccio, whereas 
justice untempered by mercy would have pointed 
him out to the universal scorn as Beppaccio, or 



no THE TUSCAN TONGUE 

the Bad Beppe. Thus a suffix which in another 
might express something like contempt (spreggia- 
tivo) becomes in him a sign of exculpation, 
almost a term of endearment. An alert ob- 
servation of human sympathies and human 
passions, a keen eye to the rough but just judg- 
ments of popular opinion, will carry you far 
deeper into the mysteries and complexities of the 
Tuscan tongue, than a mastery of all the rules 
of syntax or the expenditure of much midnight 
oil over the tomes of the Accademici della Crusca. 
But a great impediment to acquiring Tuscan 
is the cleverness, and especially the courtesy of 
the Tuscans themselves. They read your wants 
without any need of speech, and if you make a 
mistake are even capable of adopting it for the 
sake of saving your feelings. One of the first 
happy thoughts of the beginner is to Italianise 
French words. It answers so often. He knows 
to begin with that if he changes the French eau 
into ello (agneau, agnelio), or the French eur into 
ore {vapeur, vapore), he will probably be right. 
He is tempted to soar beyond these ascertained 
rules, gar con, gar zone; jar din, giardi?io ; kier, 
ieri; jamais, giammai; how smoothly the system 
works. He goes into a pizzicheria and asks the 
price of jambon, giambone, pointing to a small 
juicy ham of the Casentino cure. "Questo 
giambone," says the courteous shopman, " costa 
novanta centesimi la libbra." The ham is bought 



MISTAKES OF BEGINNERS in 

on the spot and sent home. The cook is asked 
what she thinks of the giambone f " The what ! " 
she asks in bewildered astonishment. l< The giam- 
bone which I myself sent home from the pizzicheria." 
"Ah!" she garps apologetically, "it is excellent 
giambone I Will the signore have some of it 
fried with eggs after the manner of the Ameri- 
cans ?" And so, thanks to an infamous conspiracy 
of courtesy between a shopman, a cook, a parlour- 
maid, and a serving-man, it was six months 
before I found out that there was no such word 
in the Tuscan tongue as giambone, and that the 
Italian for ham was proscnitto ! 

Worse things befell a beginner of my acquaint- 
ance who had the bad habit of Italianising 
English words. It was the occasion of his first 
experiment at five o'clock tea, and he ordered 
cream, crema. " Shall I put it in the large 
glass dish, signore ? " inquired the parlour-maid. 
"No, woman," he answered brusquely; "put it 
in the proper place ; put it in the silver jug I " 
It is the Tuscan habit to obey without question. 
" Come vuole Lei, signore" replied the maid 
submissively. When his guests were assembled 
and tea was brought in, he discovered a thick 
yellow substance in the cream-jug. He smelt 
it, and set down the jug with an exclamation 
of despair. It was rather hard, too, that there 
should have been no milk in the house and no 
cow within a mile. He knows now that the 



IT2 THE TUSCAN TONGUE 

Italian for cream is panna, and that the Italian 
for custard is crema ! 

Beautiful as is the Tuscan tongue, delightful 
as it is to hear, delightful as it is to speak, it 
is heavy and tough in the reading. Many of 
the Italian classics — excepting always in their 
letters (Bern bo, Ganganelli, Leopardi) — are tough 
and heavy. Machiavelli is heavy, Tiraboschi is 
heavier, Guicciardini stupendously ponderous. 
Dante is a superlative genius, but his locofoco- 
isms are difficult of digestion. Besides, Dante 
is overdone and overquoted until flesh and blood 
rebel. Tuscan is a splendid language for all 
verse, but it turns to heaviness in a narrative 
form. Still all fourteenth-century Tuscan is 
beautiful and even light; it is the " buon secolo," 
the "aureo secolo"; and even its narratives are 
full of exquisite charm. The first reading of 
the Fioreiti has been an epoch to many, not 
only because of the charm of the subject, but 
as a revelation in style. Tuscan is a fine theo- 
logical language too, and knows how to carry 
home the reasonableness of revealed religion 
better even than French. It is at its best 
perhaps in purely spiritual works (Cavalca, Pas- 
savanti, St. Catherine, Lorenzo Scupoli), and 
I confess to a weakness for the homely and 
very unclassical language of St. Alphonsus 
Liguori and St. Leonard of Port Maurice. 



ITALIAN SERMONS 113 

Italy is the land of sermons, but delightful as 
it is to hear a sermon, where is the Italian 
sermon you could read? Where is the Italian 
Bossuet, or Fenelon, or Bourdaloue, or even 
the Italian Ravignan or Lacordaire ? It is most 
true, as the Count de Maistre has said, that 
Italy, religious as she is and mistress of a 
sonorous language, has never yet produced a 
sermon which Europe has cared to read. Here 
and there, perhaps, people of the old school 
still rank Paolo Segneri's sermons among the 
classics, but they are nigh forgotten outside 
Italy. The great popularity of Padre Agostino 
da Montefeltro has engendered numerous and 
cheap editions of his sermons, but in the 
reading they lose all the charm of his splendid 
preaching, and have no claims whatever to im- 
mortality. 

Still the toughest of the Italian classics, nay 
the most ponderous Italian historic narrative, is 
exciting reading beside the modern, fin-de- Steele, 
realistic Italian novel with a purpose, and it is 
by a merciful dispensation of Providence that 
this beautiful and noble language will not lend 
itself to any effective prostitution of literary 
ability in fiction. The vogue for a novelist like 
D'Annunzio must soon pass ; the reaction has 
set in already, and I hope that with the change 
he may put his fine abilities to a better use. 
Such fiction as is good in Italian is wholesome 

H 



1 1 4 THE TUSCAN TONGUE 

and historic (Manzoni, D'Azeglio, Cantu). Jour- 
nalistic Italian in the form of a leader comes 
lowest of all in the scale for dulness and general 
unreadableness, but a Tuscan newspaper is 
redeemed by the naive anecdotal and inci- 
dental vein that runs through its " Cronaca della 
Citta." 

One of the reasons why the Italian classics 
seem to walk upon stilts is the past tyranny of 
the great Accademia della Crusca. The terror 
with which the Academy inspired Italian writers 
seems to us ludicrous in these days. But even 
as I write thus bravely I confess that a certain 
dread of the old Olympian thunderbolts comes 
over me. If the Academy had but command 
of the common hangman as in days gone by, 
I fear they would cause this disquisition, entirely 
unphilological as it is, to be burned at his hands 
as they burned in 171 7 the " Vocabolario Cater- 
iniano" of poor Girolamo Gigli, the adven- 
turous Sienese who had dared to dispute their 
sacred canons. It was a handful of Cruscanti 
who helped to drive poor Tasso out of his wits, 
and caused him to re-write the "Gerusalemme 
Liberata" in the form of that melancholy MS. 
preserved at Vienna, the " Gerusalemme Con- 
quistata." For fear of the Academy the his- 
torian Botta (a very heavy scribe, by the way) 
dare not call a gun a gun, but calls it an 
arquebus (archibugio). The Cruscanti fell foul 



ERRORS IN THE VOCABOLARIO ! 115 

of Manzoni too, and he re-wrote (and perhaps 
improved) the " Promessi Sposi." Tasso was a 
Neapolitan, Botta a Piedmontese, and Manzoni 
a Lombard. The Academicians hold Leopardi's 
view that the Tuscan people is the "maestro 
unico e specchio di quel divino parlare, di cui 
l'Accademia e conservatrice," and they are 
always especially severe on non-Tuscans. In 
1876 a hot-headed Romagnol, Alfonso Cerquetti, 
Professor of Italian Literature at Forll, had the 
hardihood to publish a pamphlet pointing out 
errors (sic) in the new Vocabolario of the Aca- 
demy. 1 Errors ! And in the sacrosanct Voca- 
bolario of our thrice sacrosanct Accademia! 
The philological teacup was shaken to the 
foundations, and came nigh splitting in the 
storm. Recriminations flew thick and fast. 
Cerquetti retorted bravely, but used strong 
language. 2 Two of the Academicians, Cesare 
Guasti, the Secretary, and Giovanni Tortoli, 
a notable compiler, brought an action against 
him for defamation. The Civil and Cor- 
rectional Tribunal of Milan awarded them two 
livres damages each, and so the moral victory 
rested with Cerquetti. 

1 "Agli Errori del Vocabolario della Crusca," Turin, 1876. 

2 Guasti he called "a barefaced charlatan," and said of him 
"he lies while knowing that he lies," and other the like philo- 
logical amenities. Guasti had previously described his adversary 
as " un tal dalle Marche," the concentrated satire of which is quite 
untranslatable. 



u6 THE TUSCAN TONGUE 

I would not for a moment have it supposed 
that the Crusca has not rendered incalculable 
services to literature and the language. It was 
the first Academy in the world to compile a 
dictionary of a modern language (1611). The 
fifth edition of the great dictionary, now in course 
of compilation, is a marvellous monument of 
minute learning and patient research. The Crus- 
canti work slowly. The first part of the new 
Vocabolario appeared in 1863 ; in 1900 they 
have completed the letter I. 1 (Dr. Murray's 
Dictionary, begun in 1884, has already reached 
Glass-Graded.) And note the fine and rather 
commendable arrogance of the title-page — the 
Vocabolario is not of the Italian language, or 
of the Tuscan tongue ; its title-page gives no 
hint of the language dealt with ; it is not even 
called the Dictionary of the Academy of the 
Crusca ; it is simply the Dictionary of the Aca- 
demicians of the Crusca ! (Vocabolario degli 
Accademici della Crusca). 

Something too much of this disjointed gossip. 
I must bid farewell for the present to the Tuscan 
tongue. English and German are more lyrical lan- 
guages far ; French is a far finer vehicle of prose ; 

1 Professor Cerquetti's counsel declared in his defence that the 
Vocabolario at the rate it was proceeding would not be finished 
until 1992, having cost the State 627,000,000 livres and ninety 
centimes, allowing for compound interest ! The Accademia re- 
ceives an allowance of 42,000 livres a year from the State. 



THE CHARMS OF TUSCAN 117 

but Tuscan is certainly the most charming of all 
for conversation and everyday intercourse. It re- 
flects more clearly than any other the character 
of the people who are speaking to you. Only 
think of it: one of their habitual expressions is 
" pazienza ! " and there is no other country in the 
world that uses it. When the beggar is denied 
an alms, when rough weather keeps the fisher- 
man at home, when hail destroys the contadino's 
crops and the phylloxera his vines, when the 
cabman fails to get a fare or the boatman a 
pleasure party, when any request is brusquely 
refused, when, in fact, the Tuscan cannot get 
what he wants or do as he lists, his ordinary 
expression is " pazienza ! " " Pazienza ! " sweetest 
sound in the whole language ; " pazienza ! " you 
may hear.it on all sides of you; "pazienza!" it 
fills the streets and permeates the slums and 
abides in the village hovels ; " pazienza ! " it 
rings out cheerily aboard ship and in the con- 
script barracks, and still more cheerily in prison 
and hospital and workhouse. "Pazienza!" this 
one little word, uttered as the matter-of-course 
view of life, does more to prove what others have 
sought to show in treatises, that the quiddity, 
quintessence, and, as I may say, first ground 
and principle of the Christian religion, has per- 
meated more thoroughly the mere hinds of 
this people than even the elect of the Great 
Powers of the World ! 



n8 THE TUSCAN TONGUE 

Honour, then, to the Tuscan tongue, that in 
the course of a mere philological study teaches 
us to love, almost inspires us to practise, all the 
virtues that bid a welcome to adversity, and all 
the courage that mocks at dull Care. 



TUSCAN TOWNS 





A Lp.vantine Trader 



The Majesty of the Law 




Water from the Public Founts 





Two Policemen (New Uniform) 




What Delays the Letters Coral Girls 

Typical Scenes in Leghorn 

Photografiks by Dr. Pietro Rossini 



To face p. 120 




LEGHORN 



People do not come to Leghorn. Why should 
they? They go to Italy as travellers and sight- 
seers ; and Baedeker has told them that Leghorn 
"contains little to detain the traveller," and Mr. 
Hare has said that "there is nothing whatever 
worth seeing at Leghorn." These words were 
written for travellers, and to them they may be 
true, but there is much in Leghorn to make 
the traveller cease from travelling and take 
his rest for ever in this city by the Tyrrhenian 
Sea. 

Leghorn is an instance — the only instance 
perhaps — of a large Italian city wholly untouched 
by the influence and imported requirements of the 
tourist: that is its pre-eminent charm. Modern 



122 LEGHORN 

foreign influences are confined to obscure quarters 
of the town, where the mercantile marine of all 
nations drinks bad rum (humorously called ponce, 
punch), swears, quarrels, disgraces its flag, out- 
rages Tuscan courtesy, and occasionally gets 
stuck. But more ancient foreign influences are 
very conspicuous, and in no city of Italy is there 
less Italian pur sang. It pleased Ferdinand de' 
Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, at the close 
of the sixteenth century, to erect the Castle and 
swampy village of Livorno into a refuge for the 
destitute of all nations. Catholics from England, 
Huguenots from France, Mahometan Moors from 
Christian Spain, Christian Moors from Maho- 
metan Barbary, Corsicans loathing the Genoese 
yoke, Flemings fleeing before Alva, and Jews 
from the four cardinal points of the globe, 
flocked thither in numbers. To the Jews 
especially Ferdinand I. showed great favour : a 
charter of large liberties, called the Livomina, 
was granted them, and there was a popular say- 
ing in those days, that you had as lief assault 
the Grand Duke himself as lay a finger on a 
Jew. 

All these cosmopolitan influences survive con- 
spicuously in the present day. The Leghorn 
Directory is full of names — German, English, 
Scotch, Swiss, Greek, Arabic, Armenian, Hebrew 
— that dislocate the straightly-set Italian jaw. 
The best index to the cosmopolitan character of 



ITS COSMOPOLITAN CHARACTER 123 

the city is a list of its churches. There is an 
English Church, of course, and a Scotch Free 
Kirk and Sailors' Bethel, a Waldensian Con- 
venticle and an • Italian Ebenezer, a Dutch 
Church (for Germans, Swiss, Scandinavians, and 
Huguenots), a Greek Uniat Church and a Greek 
Orthodox Church, an Armenian Uniat Church, 
a Maronite Chapel, and a monster Synagogue, 
one of the largest in the world. Nay, even 
the Salvation Army has found its way to Leg- 
horn, and at first startled the local police by 
offering for sale in the streets an Italian paper 
with the fear-inspiring title of "II Grido di 
Guerra ! " 

There was once a British " Factory " in Leg- 
horn, levying taxes on the shipping that entered 
the port, and a very powerful and wealthy 
community it was. It ceased to exist in 1825 
when Canning was at the Foreign Office, and 
since then the British Mercantile colony has 
slowly declined. Englishmen are only to be 
found as settlers abroad where money is plenti- 
fully to be made ; the palmy days when Leg- 
horn was an Emporium and a free port are 
over, and the English have departed with her 
glory. 

One of the most interesting corners of the town 
is the old British Cemetery in the Via degli Elisi. 
No record of its foundation exists, but there is 
said to be (I cannot find it) at least one tomb 



124 LEGHORN 

that goes back to 1594, almost to the year when 
Ferdinand raised Leghorn to the dignity of city. 
Tombs of the seventeenth century are plentiful. 
For a long time it was the only English, indeed 
I fancy the only Protestant, burying-ground in 
Italy. Smollett is buried here ; so is Francis 
Horner ("distinguished for his splendid talents 
and spotless integrity"), and William Henry 
Lambton, Esquire, M.P for Durham, who died 
at Pisa on the 30th November 1797 "universally 
respected and beloved ; he was able as a states- 
man, and exemplary in all the relations of life as 
a husband, father, master, and friend. 1 ' Here, 
too, lie the mortal remains of Anna, Countess 
Cowper (died 1826), Margaret Rolle. Countess 
of Orford and Baroness Clinton in her own right 
(died 1 781), and many scions of our best families 
— Lockharts of Carnwath, Murrays of B rough- 
ton, Ross's of Bladensburg, Lubbocks, Mountney 
Jephsons, Chads, Macleans, Kempthorpes, Stop- 
fords, Gwillyms, &c. &c. There was nowhere 
else where they could be buried, and the famous 
winter resort of Pisa yielded many bodies of 
consumptive Englishmen to this old cemetery. 
If Shelley's body had not been burned on the 
shores of the Duchy of Lucca, it is likely enough 
that his remains would have found their last 
resting-place here. 1 

1 Mr. G. Milner- Gibson -Cullum, F.S.A., and the late Mr. 
Francis Macauley of Florence, copied all the inscriptions in this 



THE OLD BRITISH CEMETERY 125 

The cemetery is in a state of neglect and dis- 
repair, but it must be owned that this neglect 
greatly heightens its picturesque appearance. A 
row of stately cypresses surrounds it, and with- 
in, myrtles, stone-pines, yews, huge bushes of 
monthly roses, and even an occasional eucalyp- 
tus, grow as Mother Nature lists, innocent of 
any gardener's care, whilst a luxuriant jungle 
of periwinkles, irises, wild violets, and stinging 
nettles threatens to cover the graves, and strong 
ivy and other hardy parasites creep insidiously 
within the junctures of the marble tombs and are 
gradually splitting them to pieces. 1 

The old cemetery was closed by Grand Ducal 
order in 1839 when the bounds of the city were 
enlarged, and the energetic British colony pur- 
chased land further afield, and constructed another 
burying-ground. A comparison between the two 
cemeteries is an instructive object-lesson in the 
great change that has come over English religious 
belief in the last half-century. The old cemetery 
is full of urns and sarcophagi, broken pillars, hour- 
glasses, inverted torches, skulls and cross-bones, 
lyres and laurel wreaths, medallions of prosperous 
bag-wigged traders, chubby cherubs convulsed 

interesting old cemetery. Their publication was commenced in 
the Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica for September 1896, and 
has not yet been finished. 

1 Such was the cemetery as I first knew it, but since this was 
written the present incumbent, the Rev. E. L. Gardner, has, of his 
own initiative, commenced to restore this waste wilderness to 
something like order and seemliness. 



126 LEGHORN 

with grief, and allegorical female figures veiling 
their sorrow, but of the cross, the emblem of 
Christianity, there is not a solitary instance, 
whereas in the new cemetery crosses abound 
and are invariable in all the later tombs. There 
is one cross, though, connected with the old 
cemetery which has much more significance than 
a simple cross, or even a crucifix. In 1746 Mr. 
Robert Bateman, a wealthy merchant, surrounded 
the cemetery with a wall and iron railing at his 
sole cost. Over the gate is a small voided iron 
cross ; in the centre of the cross is a rounded 
disc, and from the disc issue rays of glory. The 
disc represents the Sacramental Wafer, and it is 
placed on a cross to illustrate the Catholic doc- 
trine that the Blessed Sacrament is Our Lord 
Himself. What would have been the feelings 
of the steady-going, plain-thinking merchants of 
the British Factory had they known that the 
cross over their cemetery was preaching and 
teaching, to those who had eyes to see, the 
extremest form of the Real Presence in the 
Sacrament. But oh ! the whirligig of time ! 
This cross, and the doctrine it symbolises, would 
be devoutly accepted by the entire congrega- 
tion of many a modern Anglican Church in 
London ! 

I have said that Smollett is buried in the 
old cemetery. There is at least, surrounded 
by an iron railing, a column there erected 



MONUMENT TO SMOLLETT 127 

to his memory. The inscription on it runs as 
follows : — 

MEMORISE 

TOBIjE SMOLLETT 

QUI LIBURNI 

ANIMAM EFFLAVIT 

1 6 SEPT. 1773, QUID AM 

EX SUIS VALDE AMICIS 

CIVIBUS 

HUNC TUMULUM 

FECERUNT. 1 

Captain Buchan Telfer, R.N., has endeavoured 
to prove that Smollett is not buried here. It is 
true that the date of death on the memorial 
column is incorrect : Smollett beyond a doubt 
died on the 17th September 1771, and not on 
the 1 6th September 1773. But the memorial 
column may have been placed on the grave a 
number of years after the death. We know that 
Smollett was attended in his last illness by 
Thomas Garden, physician to the British Fac- 
tory, and by Dr. Giovanni Gentili, a Leghorn 
doctor, and therefore until better evidence to 
the contrary is forthcoming, it seems to me safe 
to accept the old tradition, both that he is buried 
in the British cemetery in the spot marked by 
the memorial, and that he died in the Villa 

1 The word " civibus " has been added after the completion of 
the inscription. It has been most obviously squeezed in as an 
afterthought, no doubt with the object of showing that there were 
no foreigners among these " valde amici." 



128 LEGHORN 

Gamba at Antignano near Leghorn, and there 
wrote the " Expedition of Humphrey Clinker." l 

Opposite the entrance to the old cemetery is 
the English Church of St. George the Martyr, 
erected in 1 838-1 840 by special permission of 
Leopold II., Grand Duke of Tuscany. Before 
this, the English Church services had to be con- 
ducted in buildings that were not permitted to 
have the semblance of a church. The new privi- 
lege was limited to the Anglican Church among 
foreign bodies. The Scotch Free Church and 
Manse, which was built soon afterwards in the 
same street, has only the appearance of a Gothic 
mansion. 

There is another place of pilgrimage in Leg- 
horn which some Englishmen will still care to 
visit — the Villa Valsovano, where in the summer 
of 1 8 19 Shelley wrote the greater part of the 
"Cenci." "Our villa," says Mrs. Shelley, "was 
situated in the midst of a podere ; the peasants 
sang as they worked beneath our windows during 
the heats of a very hot summer, and at night the 
water-wheel creaked as the process of irrigation 
went on, and the fire-flies flashed from among the 
hedges : — nature was bright, sunshiny, and cheer- 
ful, or diversified by storms of a majestic terror 
such as we had never before witnessed. At the 
top of the house there was a sort of terrace. 

1 See the whole controversy in Notes and Queries, 9th Series, 
vol. i. pp. 201, 309, and 510. 



SHELLEY'S HOUSE 129 

There is often such in Italy, generally roofed. 
This one was very small, yet not only roofed, but 
glazed : this Shelley made his study ; it looked 
out on a wide prospect of fertile country, and 
commanded a view of the near sea. The storms 
that sometimes varied our day showed them- 
selves most picturesquely as they were driven 
across the ocean ; sometimes the dark, lurid 
clouds dipped towards the waves and became 
waterspouts that churned up the waters beneath 
as they were chased onward and scattered by the 
tempest. At other times the dazzling sunlight and 
heat made it almost intolerable to every other, 
but Shelley basked in both, and his health and 
spirits revived under their influence. In this airy 
cell he wrote the principal part of the " Cenci." 1 

I have visited the Villa Valsovano, which is 
situated at the end of the Via del Fagiano, just 
within the Municipal wall : in Shelley's day it was 
far outside the town. The present proprietor 
courteously permitted me to ascend to the " airy 
cell." The small terrace still exists, but is no 
longer either roofed or glazed. The " wide pros- 
pect of fertile country " survives in undiminished 
glory. In the garden of the villa is a picturesque 
arbour formed by artificially training the branches 
01 a stout elm-tree. This sheltered nook was also 
used by Shelley as a study. It was in the lanes 

1 "The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley," edited by 
Mrs. Shelley. London, 1839, four vols. Vol. ii. p. 275. 

I 



i 3 o LEGHORN 

of Leghorn that he heard the skylark which he 
has immortalised. 

When the English visitor has lingered long 
enough in the cemetery among the memories of 
departed British greatness and prosperity, he 
should go down to the port and gaze upon the 
one work of surpassing art which Leghorn pos- 
sesses. Here is a thing to detain the traveller 
a good ten minutes. It is a statue of Ferdi- 
nand I., the father of the city, with four huge 
Moors chained at his feet. The graceful white 
marble figure of the Duke, rising serenely against 
the blue sky, and gazing proudly over the sea 
whence he had so often swept the fierce Barbary 
pirates, is the work of Giovanni dell' Opera. But 
the undoubted artistic beauty of the statue itself 
is eclipsed by the superb green bronze "quattro 
mori," writhing at each corner of its pedestal. 
These figures, instinct with life, and yet full of 
the artistic spirit which idealises life, are the work 
of Pier Jacopo Tacca, and they are surely his 
masterpiece, though I do not forget his eques- 
trian statue of Philip IV. at Madrid. His models 
he first formed in wax from the originals among 
the Moorish galley-slaves at Leghorn ; indeed a 
reasonably well-authenticated tradition states that 
they were taken from a father and three sons. 
The figures were cast from cannon taken from 
the infidel. The statue was erected in 1617 ; 
two of the Moors in 1623; the other two in 



MONUMENT OF FERDINAND I. 131 

1625. " One of the best pieces of modern work," 
says John Evelyn, who saw them in 1644. 

General Miollis, commander of the French Re- 
publican troops which occupied Leghorn, was 
gravely shocked at this statue. Four sea-robbers 
chained at the feet of a "tyrant" outraged his 
sense of fraternity and equality, and he com- 
manded the Municipality to replace the statue 
of "that monster" with a statue of Liberty. The 
tyrant who had fought for the freedom of the 
seas, and his slaves who had sought to destroy 
it, were removed ; but fortunately the French 
left Leghorn before the Idol of Liberty could be 
set up, and the statue of Ferdinand with the four 
Moors was restored to its place with much pomp 
and circumstance on the 23rd July 1799. 

Being now so near the port, the traveller should 
take a boat and be paddled about the still waters 
of the harbour. There is business doing of 
course, but there is no hurry or scurry. The 
steamers seem to need an eternity to moor or 
to get fairly under weigh, and the lazy gulls, 
flapping overhead, cry out in vain speculation at 
their leisurely and seemingly unmeaning evolu- 
tions. The traveller will notice the spick-and- 
span red-brick Port-Office, with its green Vene- 
tian shutters — the prettiest building in Leghorn 
— the trim white steam-launch moored at its 
landing stage, and the white gigs slung on its 
davits. And he will go out to the splendid New 



132 LEGHORN 

Mole that protects the entrance to the old port, 
and forms of itself a vast new harbour. It is 
curvilinear, and nearly three-quarters of a mile 
in length. The breezy walk along the top of it 
is like a walk in mid- ocean, invigorating, bracing, 
life-giving. And what a view ! To the south, 
in the near distance, the villa-studded Montenero 
and the range of the Colli Livornesi, to the east 
the Pisan Hills, to the north and north-east the 
marble mountains of Massa-Carrara and the snow- 
capped peaks of the Apuan Range, while out in 
the west the islands of the Tuscan Archipelago, 
Gorgona, Capraia, Elba, and even Corsica, can 
be seen slumbering in the sea like huge un- 
polished amethysts. 

But it is as a sea-bathing place that Leghorn 
chiefly attracts the world. It is unquestionably 
the principal, as it is unquestionably the most 
charming of Italian watering-places. The season 
nominally lasts from the 24th June to the 31st 
August, and during that time members of all the 
great Roman and Florentine families are there 
to enjoy the bracing tonic of the Tyrrhenian 
waters and the cool maestrale, which is denied 
to Florence and Rome in the summer. Then 
the place is a brilliant picture of animated gaiety. 
The delightful sea-front, laid out with tamarisks, 
stone-pines, oleanders, aloes, and countless ever- 
green shrubs and luxuriant flower-beds, is alive 
in the evenings with human life as variegated as 



BATHING 133 

itself. The beautiful drive by the sea to the 
neighbouring suburb of Ardenza swarms with 
the carriages of aristocratic visitors and rich resi- 
dents, and the old-fashioned landau of a Roman 
matron of the blackest of * black " families may 
be seen blocked in the press by the victoria of 
a lady who, though dressed in the latest fashion, 
might have stepped from the canvases of Edwin 
Long, and is the wife of a Tunisian or Israelitish 
merchant. 

The bathing at Leghorn is a veritable luxury. 
There are a number of bathing establishments 
built out into the sea, each forming a species 
of many -armed pier. The establishments are 
covered with spreading canvas, affording cool 
shelter from the fiercest sun, while the flapping 
of the canvas in the breeze acts as an unob- 
trusive punkah. The brightly - dressed crowd 
begins to troop on to the Baths at nine o'clock 
in the morning. There is no twopenny fee as 
on an English pier ; admission is free on all the 
Baths along the sea- front ; but it is wonderful to 
note with what good sense and good taste the 
different classes of society confine themselves each 
to its own particular establishment. The bathing 
is done out of baracche : each baracca is a 
square-shaped canvas tent of goodly dimensions, 
built out into the sea on a wooden frame-work. 
Inside the baracca is a stone platform with chairs, 
a fixed dressing-table, and looking-glasses. From 



134 LEGHORN 

the platform, wooden stairs descend to the green, 
pellucid sea. A considerable space of water is 
enclosed in the barracca, so that the old, the 
timid, and the made-up need never go outside 
their tent ; but if you lift the canvas curtains you 
will find yourself in a pleasant, roomy enclosure, 
where the water is never more than five feet 
deep, and thence you can strike out into the sea, 
the sea, the open sea. Ah ! and what a blessed 
thing it is that the Tyrrhenian has no tides, and 
that bathing is thus possible at any and whatso- 
ever time of the day you list. 

The gaiety of the Leghorn season is full of 
a happy, easy charm and freshness quite its 
own. The rendezvous is thoroughly national. 
Foreigners (unreasonably, I think,) fear the heat 
and do not come, and it is rarely that you hear 
any language on the Baths that is not Tuscan 
or some Italian dialect. Life at this Tus- 
can watering-place is devoid of the more formal 
etiquette of the Riviera proper, and, while 
animated and happy, it is wholly free from the 
rowdiness of certain Kentish sea-bathing places. 
Indeed, the Tuscan 'Any, when you come across 
him, is a very pleasant and well-mannered fellow, 
while the Tuscan 'Arriet is distractingly refined 
and charming - . 

The Naval Academy of Italy, where all the 
future officers of her navy are trained, is one 
of the features of Leghorn, and attracts many 



TRADE AND COMMERCE 135 

families to the town in the winter months. The 
cadets are very smart and picturesque little fel- 
lows. Three months of every year they, by a 
very wise provision, go into training on warships 
in the open seas ; they are kept hard at study 
in the Academy for eight months, and get but 
one month's holiday in the year. The young 
Duke of the Abruzzi, a son of the late Duke 
of Aosta and a nephew of King Humbert, was 
a cadet here, and the roll-call of the Academy 
at all times contains historic names that recall 
the chief glories of Italian history. 

In the midst of summer holiday and sea- 
bathing delights one is apt to forget that Leg- 
horn is a commercial town, a "place of great 
receipt," as Evelyn calls it. But I suppose that 
in any account of the place, a word must be 
spared for its trade and commerce. There is 
really a great deal of business done in Leghorn, 
but happily without bustle or greedy eagerness. 
And there are plenty of industries, but with the 
exception of the siren at the shipbuilding yard, 
they make no noise and do not objectionably 
announce their existence. There is something 
about Tuscany which softens the asperities of 
modern factories. Seen from a distance, a few 
columns of black smoke float up from Leghorn, 
but they show picturesquely against the blue 
Tuscan sky, and take new enchanting shapes in 
the clear Tuscan empyrean. 



136 LEGHORN 

Orlando's shipbuilding yard is an important 
place, and comes most under the notice of the 
public eye. It employs two thousand men and 
more ; it turns out line-of-battle ships (the 
Lepanto) and first-class cruisers (the Varese) ; 
it has built for foreign Governments, for the 
Argentine Republic, for Portugal, for the Sultan 
of Morocco himself (a gun-vessel that is called 
the " Beschir-es-Salameh" which being inter- 
preted means "the bearer of good tidings from 
Islam to the Four Quarters of the Globe"). 
There are rolling-mills, there are glassworks, 
there are soapworks, and flour and maize mills. 
Twenty-six thousand hundredweight of candied 
citron are turned out every year, and a vast 
quantity of the various shapes of Maccheroni, or 
I should say "paste" for Maccheroni is but one 
of the many different kinds of Italian pastes. 
An immense amount of Coral is worked in Leg- 
horn. It comes hither from Sicily, Sardinia, 
Barbary, the Azores, and Japan. The principal 
coral works, the property of the Brothers Chayes, 
are situated on the third floor of one of the finest 
villas, in the midst of one of the most smiling 
gardens, of the town. Patrician ease, not thriv- 
ing trade, is suggested by the look of the place : 
this is a typical instance of the buried nature of 
the industries of Leghorn. The workers are all 
girls, and (by the way) Leghorn is famous for 
the beauty of its girls. Rag-pickers are a large 




Photograph by Bettini, Leghorn 

The Duke of the Abruzzi, as a Boy 



To face p. 136 



IMPORTS 137 

class : Signor Enrico Grandi's warehouse is a 
busy place between the picking and the storing, 
and it is certainly an odd sensation to stroll 
through narrow ravines with, on either hand, 
from floor to ceiling, great perpendicular piles 
of hempen cordage, old and new Mungo, and 
white and coloured vegetable rags. Here, too, 
nearly all the workers are girls. 

What a heap of things come into Leghorn in 
the course of a year : Coal from Scotland, Wales, 
and the Tyne, for use chiefly by the railways 
and the gas companies. There are but six cities 
in all Tuscany that have gas — Florence, Leg- 
horn, Pisa, Lucca, Siena, and Prato. Artistic 
Pistoia, lordly Volterra, and ancient Arezzo are 
content with oil lamps, but some tiny towns and 
big villages are far ahead of them all and have 
electric light. Then there is Sulphate of Copper 
for the sickly vines ; dried cod from Newfound- 
land for the observant of Lent ; Tobacco from 
Kentucky for manufacture into cigars by a 
paternal Government ; Whisky for the travel- 
ling Scot and Saxon ; Carbonate of Soda ; 
Coffee; Cotton; Hides; Scrap Iron; Jute; 
Petroleum ; Wheat ; Wool — and all in great 
quantities. 

And what a heap of things leave Leghorn : 
Boracic Acid for Lord Lister's antiseptic treat- 
ment ; Briar-root for conversion into G.B.D.'s; 
Candied Citron for the Dutch and Scandinavians 



138 LEGHORN 

who know not how to candy ; Coral to adorn 
the ladies of Nepaul and savage Africa ; Hemp 
from Ferrara for twisting in Chatham and Ports- 
mouth Dockyards ; Hides from the great white 
oxen of the Val d'Arno for London harness ; 
Marble from Carrara for the English dead ; the 
Mercury of Monte Amiata for the gold mines 
of the Transvaal ; Olive Oil for Crosse and 
Blackwell and the Widow Lazenby ; Orris Root 
from Florence and Verona, without which Rim- 
mel, and Atkinson, and all the perfume-makers 
of Grasse would be helpless ; Pumice-stone for 
the Monkey Brand Soap ; Rags for the manu- 
facture of newspapers ; Straw hats and Tuscan 
bonnets called of " Leghorn," but which are 
made fifty miles up the Arno at Signa ; Soap 
compounded of the refuse of pressed olives, 
which is eagerly sought for on the Spanish 
main ; Siena earths and Ochres which come — 
things go by contraries in Tuscany — not from 
Siena but from the Province of Grosseto, 1 and 
go home to make beautiful the walls of the 
Academy and the New Gallery. And all these 
things, too, in great quantities. An entertaining 
book might be written about the trade of this 
bright, smiling, happy-go-lucky centre of industry. 
The workers of Leghorn, in spite of long 

1 But, of course, the modern Province of Grosseto used to be in 
the ancient Republic of Siena, and hence the name applied to 
these pigments. 



STROLLING HOMEWARDS SINGING 139 

hours and a low wage, always seem content 
and happy, and they are great songsters as 
they stroll homewards after the day's work is 
done. Their songs, if one does but pay heed 
to the words, are a sure index to the dominant 
feelings and hopes of the moment. Twenty 
years ago some of them used to sing : 

" O when I die 
I want the band 
With four Republicans at the pall." 

About ten years ago, to the same tune, but with 
an important change in a word, they commenced 
to sing like this : 

" O when I die 
I want the band 
With four true Socialists at the pall." 

I wait in daily expectation of the next change ; 
the reaction is already setting in : 

" O when I die 
I want the band 
With four good Clericals at the pall." 

There is a great place of pilgrimage on a hill 
three miles from Leghorn, Montenero, where, 
since 1345 (without question, the date), there has 
existed a remarkable and wonder-working pic- 
ture of the Madonna. The traveller should 
choose the 8th September for his visit if he de- 
sires to see the place at a characteristic moment, 
when the Confraternities and Sodalities of the 



140 LEGHORN 

city go up in their picturesque dresses, and the 
whole of the steep ascent is lined with a long line 
of beggars in every stage of squalor and decrepi- 
tude. This may be the place to say that if the 
foreign observer desires to learn the history of a 
Tuscan town or to understand its people, let him 
immediately find out the miracle picture of the 
place and commence to study and acquire its 
legend : the rest follows of itself by some mys- 
terious means. It is useless to seek to know 
the Livornesi without learning something about 
Montenero, to which the least principled of them 
have some attachment. These miracle pictures 
have, all the world over, a character which is 
quite their own. It is not merely that they are, 
like the pictures of Giotto or Fra Angelico, in- 
stinct with a spiritual idea that defies while it 
ennobles the canons of art, but they have a 
quality which eludes all analysis, and impresses 
the instructed even more than the ignorant. On 
quite natural grounds it seems no wonder that 
they have come to be called "miraculous," for it 
would certainly be against all known laws to call 
them "creations" of art. 

The Madonna of Montenero, according to the 
legend, is said to have come miraculously from 
Negroponte (where the picture was held in high 
honour) to Ardenza, near Leghorn, but there is 
reason to believe that it was removed on natural 
grounds through fear of a Mahometan rising. A 







r -n. i . » , T .i. ' ij»wij, ^r >.j. « 



Our Lady of Montenero, Leghorn 

Photographed from the Original by Ugo Bettini, Leghorn 



To face /. 140 



MADONNA OF MONTENERO 141 

shepherd is supposed to have found it at Ardenza 
(a chapel marks the spot), and to have carried it 
on his back up the hill until, suddenly becoming 
of unbearable weight, he had to set it down, and 
that was taken as a sign that a shrine should be 
built on the spot. From 1455 to 1668 the Sanc- 
tuary was in charge of the Jesuats; 1 from 1669 
to 1783 it was intrusted to the Clerks Regular of 
St. Cajetan or Theatines ; and they were suc- 
ceeded in 1793 by monks of the Vallombrosan 
Congregation of Benedictines, with an Abbot at 
their head. This Order is still in charge of 
Montenero. The present Abbot is Dom Arsenio 
Viscardi ; he has the proud attribute of Mitred 
Abbot, but also the lowly style and calling of 
parish priest of the village. The church is hand- 
some, and rich in marbles. It is also rich in a 
remarkable collection of votive pictures depicting, 
often with harrowing details, and always without 
regard for perspective or the laws of gravitation, 
the accident from which the donor had escaped with 
his life. The wonderful picture of the Madonna, 
covered by a veil, is enshrined over the High 
Altar, and may be seen for the asking. 

1 How, the instructed will at once ask, could an order of laymen 
like the Jesuats be able to serve a church and shrine ? The answer 
is simple : they employed a few secular priests. Further, in 1605 
Pope Paul V. allowed them to enter holy orders. The Order was 
suppressed by Clement IX. in 1668 as being in a declining condi- 
tion. The Jesuits, who seem destined to receive a large share of 
both welcome and unwelcome attention, have even been con- 
founded with the Jesuats. 



142 LEGHORN 

It would be impossible to enumerate the num- 
ber of times that the city has been preserved 
from the plague, and the lives of its citizens 
saved during the perils of an earthquake through 
the intercession of Our Lady of Montenero. In 
1 720, and on the 20th May, the sanitary autho 
rities of Leghorn, after anxious deliberation, re- 
fused pratique to a French vessel from the East 
as being suspected of having the plague on 
board. The ship proceeded to Marseilles, and 
there succeeded in obtaining pratique : a great 
epidemic of the plague was the result. In com- 
memoration of this deliverance all the Leghorn 
Bills of Health down to the year 1859 bore the 
image of the Madonna of Montenero. 

I have no space in these brief paragraphs to 
indicate any other instances of the tender love 
and gratitude to the Unseen Good that are 
generated at such a place as Montenero. The 
sensible picture is but a symbol of the Unseen — 
an Unseen Mother, careful and anxious about 
her children, herself dependent upon an Unseen 
Father with whom she has much influence, and 
who is the Lord of All Things. This is how the 
fisherman, the rag-picker, the coral girl, and the 
contadino look at it, and who is there that would 
not fain believe that they may have right on 
their side ? 

• •••or 

Leghorn, the city that does not "detain the 



LIVORNO, LA CARA 143 

traveller," that has in it "nothing worth seeing," 
is far too full of memories and beauties for one 
brief chapter, and cries aloud for a whole book. 
Many Italian cities have a qualifying adjective 
dear to their citizens, that at the first blush seems 
to be a complete misnomer, but that time and 
study show to be pre-eminently apt and true. 
Florence is "la bella," but this you never com- 
prehend until you come to look down upon the 
city from the heights of San Miniato or Fiesole. 
Lucca is "l'industriosa," but even after a week's 
sojourn you rub your eyes and ask if this is not 
Sleepy Hollow. Genoa is "la superba," but her 
glory is at first sight dimmed by the obtrusive- 
ness and omnipresence of the commercial ele- 
ment. And Leghorn is "la cara." Surely no 
attribute could be more glaringly incorrect. And 
yet let the traveller cease awhile from travelling 
and take his rest by the Liburnian shore, let him 
dip in the tonic waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea, 
and walk by its shores in the cool spring days 
and warm winter afternoons, drinking in the 
health-giving breezes and feasting on the glories 
of the Gorgonian Archipelago, let him mingle 
freely with the cheery, courteous, contented 
Livornesi, who dearly love to bid a stranger 
welcome, and he will see that Time has well 
named Leghorn "la cara," and that she is dear 
indeed. 




II 



LUCCA 



A city in Italy is a very different thing- from a 
city in England. The history of England is 
great and glorious, but scarce one of her cities 
has any story that could properly be called 
history. It is very different with the cities of 
Italy, which have each, of themselves, the separate 
histories of great and independent nations : 
Venice. Genoa, Florence, Milan, Rome, Naples, 
for example ; — or take smaller towns, Bologna, 
Parma, Modena ; Siena, Pisa, Volterra ; Pistoia, 
even, or Padua : — to know the chronicles of such 
cities is a lesson in universal history and no mere 
study of everyday municipal life. Think only 
for a moment of Dewsbury or Hartlepool ; of 
Manchester, Liverpool, or Leeds ; of Glasgow, 



A SOVEREIGN REPUBLIC IN 1160 145 

Middlesborough, Birmingham, or Cardiff: — here 
we have fruitful industry, busy stirring events, 
individual heroism and enterprise, but not history 
on the universal scale. The mere mention of 
such cities by name serves of itself to bring out 
the contrast with the dominant note of an Italian 
city. 

In the rich galaxy of the histories of Italian 
cities I doubt if there is a story more striking, 
more enchanting, than the story of the Magni- 
ficent People and Commune of Lucca. I cannot 
write the history of Lucca in a brief chapter, but 
I must spare a paragraph or two to the changes 
of dominion she has undergone, without which it 
would be impossible to understand many common- 
place allusions and everyday events in the old 
town. Lucca maintained her existence as an 
independent State down to the year 1847, an ^ 
she is still the capital of the modern Italian 
province bearing her name. I should be afraid 
to say when her separate existence began, but 
the year 1 160 saw her a Sovereign Republic with 
great power and many privileges. The first two 
centuries of the Republic's freedom were broken 
by the domination of an occasional tyrant — 
Uguccione della Faggiola, Lord of Pisa, for 
example, who made himself Lord also of Lucca, 
until expelled by the famous Castruccio Castra- 
cane ("then the greatest war-captain in Europe," 
says Mr. Ruskin), who in turn became Duke of 

K 



146 LUCCA 

Lucca, and proved a kindly and beneficent despot. 
Lucca fell under Pisan domination from 1342 to 
1369, but from that year onwards down to the 
year 1799, coveted by all, subdued by none, she 
enjoyed an uninterrupted, contented, proud, and 
extremely prosperous existence as a free and 
independent Republic. Unlike the Republics 
of Genoa and Venice, she even escaped annexa- 
tion by France. True the French in that year 
insisted upon her Republican constitution being 
brought up to date, but the Lucchesi survived 
the ordeal, and the Fathers of the city seem to 
have behaved with great courage and patriotism 
under circumstances very distasteful to the majority 
of the people. 

Napoleon made a definitive end of the Re- 
public in 1805, and erected Lucca, along with 
Piombino, into a Principality for his sister Elisa 
and her husband Count Felice Baciocchi. The 
good Count was little more than a figurehead, 
but Elisa succumbed to the fascinating influences 
of the Lucchese character, and ruled in an en- 
lightened and exemplary fashion. She was forced 
to leave Lucca in 18 14 when the change in her 
brother's fortunes at length came about. Lucca 
was made a Duchy at the mischief-making Con- 
gress of Vienna, and given temporarily to Maria 
Louisa of Bourbon, Duchess of Parma (who had 
been Queen also of the short-lived Kingdom of 
Etruria), in compensation for Parma, which was 



SOME DRY DETAILS 147 

given to Napoleon's Empress for life. Maria 
Louisa died in 1824, and was succeeded by her 
son Charles Louis, Duke of Lucca, who in 1847 
ceded Lucca to trie Grand Duke of Tuscany, 1 and 
two months later, on the death of Napoleon's 
widow, became Charles II., Duke of Parma. 
Mother and son were greatly beloved for their 
justice, generosity, and the lavish benefits they 
conferred upon a people to whom they were only 
temporarily tied. They have left a grateful 
memory behind them in the old Republic, and 
Maria Louisa's statue by Lorenzo Bartolini is 
still allowed to adorn the Piazza Napoleone in 
Lucca. I have been as brief as possible with 
these dry details, but I can assure the intelligent 
reader that he would not long be comfortable in 
Lucca without a familiar knowledge of them. 

One word more on the history of Lucca. 
There is perhaps no State of which the history 
might be written so fully and so vividly, thanks 
to the careful custody at all times of the State's 
Archives. All the material is there ready to 
hand, and it has already been digested in the 

1 The Grand Duke made a very bad bargain in taking over 
Lucca from Charles Louis. He was in any case entitled to it on 
the death of Napoleon's widow. But the Archduchess Maria 
Louisa, who was only fifty-six at the time of her death, was 
expected to live much longer, and the Grand Duke Leopold was 
in such a hurry to come into so fine a heritage that he paid the 
Duke of Lucca a handsome pension for the cession of his territory 
which he would have got for nothing had he but waited two 
months more. 



148 LUCCA 

splendid " Inventario " l of the late Salvatore 
Bongi, who, during his long term of keepership, 
reduced the Archivio to its present most perfect 
methodical order. The Archivio di Stato of 
Lucca, with its wealth of parchments (the earliest 
bears date the 2nd April 790), with its immense 
collection of charters, statutes, edicts, treaties, 
letters-patent, bulls and briefs, and imperial privi- 
leges, is one of the most interesting places of the 
kind in Italy. I recommend even a cursory visit 
to the speeding traveller, and his lot will be 
enviable if he have the good fortune to find in 
his guide Baron Francesco Acton, one of the 
assistant keepers, and, in a sense, an Englishman. 
In approaching Lucca you will come either from 
Pisa or Pistoia, and either way your eyes will 
be made glad by the rich and beautiful country 
through which you have to pass. It is the coun- 
try of the husbandman, the country of the vine, 
the olive, the mulberry, of tall maize and waving 
corn, of the scarlet trefoil and the purple vetch. 
On either hand you behold one vast fruitful 
stretch of fertile land all assiduously cultivated 
by the hand of man ; it is hard to understand in 
such a place why Italy is the poorest and not 
the richest country in the world. And as you 
approach Lucca, you will see that it is a city 
entirely girded by a stout brick wall of closely 
wrought and very perfect masonry, and that this 

1 " Inventario del R. Archivio di Stato," 4 vols., 1872, &c. 



THE REPUBLIC OF LUCCA 



149 



wall and its rounded bastions are planted with 
avenues of shady trees, — maples, acacias, limes, 
and elms. From the station you will enter the 
city by the Porta San Pietro, where over the 
ancient gateway there once stood the arms of 
the old Republic : azure, 
on a bend or, the glorious 
word Libertas. It is 
laughable to record that 
during the new-fangled 
Republic inspired by 
French models the ex- 
treme party took offence 
at a motto written in a 
dead language, and sug- 
gested that the Italian 
word "liberta" should be 
substituted for the Latin 
"libertas." 1 As if " libertas 
intelligible to every Italian peasant, and as if 
liberty were not all the more glorious for being 
as old as the Latin language. 

Having passed through the gate and satisfied 
the courteous octroi (dazio consttmo) officials that 
you have nothing to declare, you will, if you take 
Mr. Hare's advice, drive straight to the Albergo 
dell' Universo, and take your ease in that inn. 
It is good, sound, and serviceable advice. The 
hotel occupies the first floor of the old Palazzo 

1 Mazzarosa, " Storia di Lucca," vol. ii. p. 78. 




REPUBLIC OF LUCCA 



were not perfectly 



150 LUCCA 

Arnolfini (sixteenth century) and fronts the 
Teatro del Giglio, where in September there is 
excellent opera. Mr. Hare, who is usually reti- 
cent in such matters, launches into quite un- 
wonted praise of the old inn. " It is," he says, 
" most excellent and reasonable. It has a small 
garden, and its large lofty rooms are cool and 
airy in summer. This inn deserves special 
notice, because, without losing its character as 
an Italian albergo, it has all the comfort and 
cleanliness which English travellers require." 1 
In turning over the leaves of the visitors' book 
at the inn, I discovered unexpected and exalted 
testimony to its worth. Here is what I found : — 

" Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Collingwood stayed here 
three weeks in the October of 1882 ; and have 
been entirely comfortable in the care of M. Nieri 
and his servants." 

The Lucchesi remember Mr. Ruskin's several 
visits very well, and with much pride and plea- 
sure. They tell many an anecdote about the 
"gran scrittore inglese," who used to go about 
with a man bearing a ladder, and scale the facades 
and interiors of their churches, peering into all 
manner of nooks and crannies with strange per- 
sistency and devotion. And the landlady of the 
Universo will tell you, not without a touch of 
compassion in her voice, how the "povero Signor 
Collingwood " was made to lie on his back, and 

1 Augustus J. C. Hare, " Cities of Central Italy," vol. i. p. 54. 



THE WALLS 151 

copy the design on the ceiling of the master's 
bedroom. Small wonder when one has seen 
the design, which is delicate and extremely 
beautiful. 

The first glimpse of the city from outside is so 
entrancing, that leaving for a moment churches, 
palaces, monuments, and picture galleries, our 
natural instinct leads us straight back to the walls. 
The walk round these walls still remains one of 
the most beautiful in Italy. It is not what it was 
(alas !), for the moderns cut down many portions 
of the splendid avenues which sweep right round 
the ramparts. Still on the bastions many old 
trees have been left standing, and the young 
avenues on the curtains are growing apace and 
thriving. No one who did not know the splen- 
dour of the old order would dream of quarrelling 
with the new. On some of the bastions there 
are statues. Mazzini and Benedetto Cairoli are 
here, far from home, and seemingly out of their 
element : King Charles III. of Spain seems more 
in place, for he was at least grandfather to Maria 
Louisa, first Duchess of Lucca. The city is 
entirely surrounded by hills and mountains, with 
the 'exception of a gap to the east, but the hills 
are at a respectful distance, so that the city is not 
uncomfortably inclosed. The prospect is gentle 
and most alluring. From the walls, due south, 
one gets a good view of the handsome aqueduct 
that brings cool sweet drinking-water from the 



152 LUCCA 

hills to the town. It is composed of 459 arches, 
and is a good three miles in length. This is one 
of the many benefits for which the Lucchesi bless 
the memory of Maria Louisa of Bourbon, their 
Duchess. 

Lucca has ever been, and still is, a very reli- 
gious city. To satisfy the spiritual wants of a 
population of some 22,000 souls there are about 
seventy churches and chapels, many of them 
still in use. Here and there the powers that be 
have seized upon a church or a monastery — often 
with too little regard for Lucchese tradition and 
sentiment — and turned it to secular uses. San 
Francesco, the fine church of the Conventual 
Franciscans, which contains the tomb of Cas- 
truccio Castracane, the "war-captain," is now a 
busy military store ; and in order to gaze upon 
the modest resting-place of the great warrior, 
one has to obtain a permit from the Colonel in 
command. Here too is the mausoleum of Mon- 
signor Giovanni Guidiccioni, the elegant poet 
and polished litterateur, whose letters are an 
Italian classic. It is boarded up, and may no 
longer be seen, though I have read somewhere 
that it is of great beauty. 

The three most interesting of the seventy 
churches are the Duomo (San Martino), the 
Lombard church of San Frediano, and the church 
of San Michele ("a noble piece," says John 
Evelyn). Both San Frediano and San Michele 



THE VOLTO SANTO 153 

date in great part from the eighth century, but 
you learn in Lucca to take dates of three figures 
without drawing breath, and soon come to re- 
gard the eventful century of St. Francis and St. 
Dominic as matter of very recent history. On 
the topmost point of the facade of San Michele 
is a huge sculptured figure of the Archangel, 
which dominates the whole city. In San Fre- 
diano there is a majolica Annunciation of the 
Delia Robbia school, literally a dream of beauty, 
and one of Francesco Francia's best pictures, a 
Coronation of the Virgin. Here likewise is the 
tomb and incorrupt body of Santa Zita, model 
and patroness of waiting-women, who is honoured 
even in far-away London by the English branch 
of the servant-maids' Guild of St. Zita. Of the 
rich treasures of the Duomo it is impossible to 
speak in a brief chapter. Professor Ridolfi has 
devoted a stout volume to the subject, in which 
the curious may revel and riot. 1 But the Duomo 
contains the greatest of all Lucca's treasures, 
that which throughout the ages of faith caused 
the eyes of all Christendom to be turned upon 
her, in comparison of which her exploits in war, 
her flourishing commerce, her triumphs in art, 
were as nothing in the estimation of the nations 
— this is the Volto Santo, and of this singu- 
lar treasure, too easily dismissed by the en- 

1 Enrico Ridolfi, " L'Arte in Lucca studiata nella sua Catte- 
drale." Lucca, 18S2. 



154 LUCCA 

lightened traveller, I crave leave to say a word 
or two. 

The Volto Santo is a cedar-wood crucifix about 
thirteen feet in length, the figure of it clad in the 
seamless coat reaching to the feet. It was carved 
at Ramah, a city of the tribe of Benjamin, by 
that master of Israel whose name was Nico- 
demus, and while he slept an angel finished the 
face which he had feared to begin. Then it 
passed to the custody of holy men, who jealously 
shielded it from the fury of the Iconoclasts, 
until 782, when it was discovered to a pilgrim 
bishop from Piedmont, Gualfredo by name, by 
an angel of the Lord, who appeared to him in 
a vision. Gualfredo, always instructed by the 
angel, put it on board of an empty bark in the 
neighbouring port of Joppa, and committed it to 
the mercy of the waves. The bark was miracu- 
lously guided to the old city of Luni, near the 
modern Spezia, and here sojourning at the time 
of its arrival was Giovanni, Bishop of Lucca. 
Giovanni, admonished he too by an angel of the 
Lord, was commanded to bear the holy image to 
Lucca. But the people of Luni not unnaturally 
objected to thus losing this miraculous treasure. 
Finally, it was agreed that the Volto Santo should 
be placed on a cart drawn by two white oxen, and 
that wherever these oxen went, there the Volto 
Santo should remain. The oxen went straight 
to the city of Lucca, and there the Volto Santo 




The Volto Santo, Lucca 



To face p. 154 



THE OLD LEGEND 155 

has ever since remained, working great wonders, 
and drawing to this day vast crowds of pilgrims 
from all corners of the Catholic world. 

The wonders and marvels of this old legend 
are not so wonderful nor so marvellous as the 
Volto Santo itself, which you may see with your 
own eyes at Lucca on any of the four or five 
days of the year on which it is exposed to the 
veneration of the faithful. Look at the repre- 
sentation of it here reproduced ; look at this face 
so full of pathos, of infinite love, and pity, and 
sorrow, so Divine in fact, and you feel quite 
naturally that you are on the borderland of mir- 
acle, and insensibly nearer to understanding what 
manner of man was He who was despised and 
rejected of men. It is easy to prove that the 
Volto Santo has been in Lucca over a thousand 
years ; it is easy to prove that it came from the 
East. Whether Nicodemus carved it, or whether 
it came to Luni in an open boat, does not seem 
to matter much. All our interest in scientific 
methods of criticism fades in the presence of 
a face that is so little terrestrial that it is difficult 
to understand how the mind of man can have 
imagined, or the hand of man have fashioned it. 
The piety of ages has added to the simulacrum 
a rich bejewelled robe of velvet covering the old 
cedar-wood robe, and a massive golden crown 
studded with diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and 
sapphires, a marvel of the goldsmith's most elabo- 



156 LUCCA 

rate art. The feast of Santa Croce on the 14th 
September of each year, when the Volto Santo 
is exposed, is still the greatest day in the Luc- 
chese calendar. 1 

Lucca can boast of one supreme artist, the 
sculptor Matteo Civitali, who was born in 1436 
and died in 1501. There is an old tablet in 
existence which says he was a barber until he 
was forty, when suddenly seized with a love of 
sculpture, he as suddenly developed into a 
sculptor. Certainly no record tells who his 
master was, and the learned Marchese Mazza- 
rosa thinks that he had no master. It is likely 
enough, for spontaneity is one of the distinguish- 
ing characteristics of his work. It is pretty 
certain that Matteo took to sculpture quite late 
in life, for there is no known work of his before 
the year 1472, when he was thirty-six years of 
age. He was a Lucchese to the finger-tips, and, 
with the exception of six statues for the Chapel 
of San Giovanni in the Duomo of Genoa, he did 
no work that was not destined for his native city 
and her territory. To this day, outside Lucca, 

1 The Volto Santo has never been photographed. My repro- 
duction, showing only half the figure, is taken from a drawing 
by Nicolao Landucci, and is a very faithful likeness. Mediaeval 
Englishmen had a great devotion to the Volto Santo. William 
of Malmesbury records that the Red King habitually swore " per 
sanctum vultum de Luca," and in the old London church of St. 
Thomas there was an effigy of the Volto Santo, the cult of which 
was cared for by the Lucchese colony. See Canon Almerico 
Guerra's " Storia del Volto Santo." Lucca, 1881. 



SIP |^fl*^^h^HSHfflSfljM 




MATTEO CIVITALI 157 

you cannot well study Civitali. There is his 
statue of Faith in the Bargello at Florence ; a 
frieze, two tabernacles, and statuettes of the 
Virgin and St. John Baptist at South Ken- 
sington ; the head of a woman at Berlin — these, 
and the statues at Genoa, are (I believe) the 
only works of Civitali that have found their way 
beyond the borders of the old Republic. The 
Duomo of Lucca is full of his masterpieces. 
There is the tomb of Pietro da Noceta (1472), 
the secretary of Pope Nicholas V., whose recum- 
bent figure, with its startlingly sweet and peaceful 
face, makes you more than half in love with 
death ; there are the two adorable Angels (1477) 
in adoration, one on either side of the Tabernacle, 
in the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament ; there is 
the modest tomb and beautiful bust of Domenico 
Bertini (1479), the pulpit (1494-1498), the altar 
and tomb of St. Regulus (1484), the figure of 
St. Sebastian (1484), the first genuine instance 
perhaps of mediaeval sculpture in the nude, and 
amongst other works, two exquisite holy-water 
stoups. Outside San Michele there is a Virgin 
and Child, inside San Romano the tomb of the 
saint. But the crowning glory of Matteo Civi- 
tali (to my mind) is the Madonna delle Tosse, 
the sweet figure of the Blessed Virgin with her 
Infant at the breast, which is hidden away — and 
almost forgotten — in the Church of the SS. 
Trinita. Santa Trinita is an obscure and barn- 



158 LUCCA 

like church of the cinquecento, out-of-the-way 
and most uninviting in its exterior. Civitali's 
priceless work is covered by a curtain (for it is 
an object of devotion), so that unless you know 
of it and ask to see it, you will miss one of the 
greatest sights of Lucca. Some of the subtlest 
qualities of the work — a certain fresh youth ful- 
ness that in the original tempers the idea of the 
mother and the matron — seem to have evaporated 
in the photograph from which this engraving is 
reproduced, but happily the sweet expressive 
mouth and loving eyes have been to the full pre- 
served. The statue could only have been de- 
signed by a man of the softest heart, and indeed 
it is precisely in the expression of love and 
tenderness that Matteo excels all his fellows. 
Civitali was, moreover, a fine and practical archi- 
tect. He is thought to have built the Palazzo 
Pretorio, and to him belongs the honour of 
having built the dome-like chapel {Tembietto) in 
which is preserved the sacrosanct and venerable 
Volto Santo. In 1893 the Lucchesi, with much 
ceremony, placed a very creditable statue of him 
in the Loggia of the Palazzo Pretorio. 1 

Lucca is a curiously recondite city. It abounds 
in treasures and surprises, but few of them are 
patent. You must live there a long time, and 

1 The reader desirous of further information about Matteo is 
referred to the beautifully illustrated work of M. Charles Yriarte : 
" Matteo Civitali; sa Vie et son CEuvre." Paris, 1886. 



THE LUCCHESI 159 

be patient and very courteous, if you would 
fathom its secrets. Gradually you will become 
aware that there is matter of interest hidden 
away in the old town abundant enough to last 
a lifetime ; gradually the full fascination of this 
unique place grows upon you ; with difficulty 
you tear yourself away from it and go back to 
the rough, jostling, immoderate and unmeasured 
life of the world outside, but never do you succeed 
in rooting out of your heart the sweet ennobling 
memories of this most favoured spot of God's 
earth. And perhaps the warmest corner of all in 
your heart will be reserved for the Lucchesi 
themselves. What a people ! What a nation ! 
Piety, probity, frugality, the quality of honest 
pride born of long independence under wise, just, 
and free government — perfect skill in manufac- 
tures and agriculture, idiosyncratic, unparagoned, 
the growth of illustrious and sane traditions — all 
these characteristics of their national individuality 
still survive in the Lucchesi, and have not yet 
given way before the automatic uniformity that has 
too mercilessly been adopted by the modern unity. 
Heine — the semi-pagan Heinrich Heine — 'has 
luminously described the Lucchese territory in a 
single sentence of two solitary words. 1 Nirgends 
Philistergesichter, he says : nowhere may you see 
the face of a Philistine. This high eulogium of 

1 " Sammtliche Werke," vol. vi. " Reisebilder : die Stadt Lucca," 
p. 126. Hamburg, 1884. 



i6o LUCCA 

Lucca by one of the dearest favourites of the 
modern world should surely cause the busy 
sightseer to turn aside for a moment from the 
beaten track of travellers, and behold with his 
own eyes a city that is free of Philistines and a 
country that recalls all the glories of the Promised 
Land. 




Ill 



PISA 



Pisa to the general imagination is nothing more 
than a city- of a few superb sights. Men drive 
from the station with closed eyes to that remote 
corner of the town where stands one of the seven 
wonders of the world, and three of its greatest 
marvels. Few are the travellers that stay more 
than one night in Pisa, and very many are they 
who find a break of a few hours sufficient to 
"do" its "sights." Nor does Pisa any longer 
attract or bewitch the foreign resident ; I scarce 
can tell why, though there certainly does seem to 
be an indefinable something the matter with the 
place. It is dull, but so is charming Lucca ; it is 
not comforting, but neither is Arezzo the allur- 
ing ; its people are less lovable than many 

?0 * h 



i 62 PISA 

Tuscans, yet they are immeasurably to be pre- 
ferred to the showy Ghibellines of Siena the 
bewitching. Pisa may be suffering from a com- 
plication of ills not readily definable, but one of 
its disorders at least is sufficiently easy of diag- 
nosis. It is suffering from a very virulent access 
of modernity in its ideas, and these, cast into 
the majestic mould of its mediaeval glories, mix 
ill and produce a certain uncomfortable sense of 
the incongruous. 

And yet, in spite of all that the anxious but 
carping well-wisher may say, how charming it 
is and how beautiful ! If the Lung'' Arno of 
Florence is more picturesque, the Lung' Arno 
of Pisa, curved like a delicate section of Giotto's 
O, is ten times more stately and more beautiful. 
Multi-coloured and many-formed palaces, still in 
all their mediaeval pride and splendour, rise up 
on each side against the blue sky with all the 
serene assurance of perennial existence and un- 
changeableness, while on the southern bank, plumb 
with the wall of the quay, is the choicest of all 
Gothic gems, the little Church of Santa Maria 
della Spina, central and chief jewel of this per- 
fect circlet. Attached to this church there exists 
what the passing traveller wots not of, the foun- 
dation for a very ancient Mass, the Messa dei 
Cacciatori, which used to be said as early as 
two or three in the morning to enable the 
Pisan huntsmen of mediaeval days to be be- 



THE MESSA DEI CACCIATORI 163 

times on the road and yet spiritually fortified. 
The Mass is still in existence, is still called 
"dei Cacciatori," but is no longer said preter- 
naturally early, and is unattended by any sports- 
man that ever I saw. 

The Cathedral of Pisa is one of the finest in 
the world ; its Baptistery the most gem-like ; its 
Campanile the most remarkable ; its Campo 
Santo quite the most unique and memorable. 
The reader is rightly already a little wearied of 
hearing of these marvels : historians and art 
critics have exhausted the subject, and cheap 
scribblers have bored us with their irksome 
iterations. It is a weariness of the flesh to 
commend the matchless. I leave the intelligent 
reader to a good catalogue and his own thoughts. 
Of the Baptistery I would only say : do not omit 
to hear the famous echo that will strike sweet 
chords aloft at your bidding. And of the Lean- 
ing Tower : go up to the top of it and see what 
you may see — Livorno and the ships that go down 
into the sea, the Tuscan Archipelago when the 
atmosphere is kind, the mountains of the Car- 
rarese and the Garfagnana, the hills that shut out 
the sight of Lucca, and the great plain of Pisa 
stretching at your feet all adorned with the work 
of busy husbandmen. And of the Duomo I 
would merely say : try and be present when 
there is a function on, when in the choir there 
is a full Chapter of the Canons in their red 



164 PISA 

cassocks, looking like so many stately Princes 
of the Church, when the Epistle and Gospel are 
chanted from the lofty pulpits on the right and 
left hand of the High Altar, when sweet music 
and fragrant incense rise heavenwards, when the 
venerable Archbishop, Count Capponi, raises his 
hand in the final Benedicat vos. It is then that you 
more properly realise that this noble building is 
no mere mediaeval "sight," preserved in perfect 
order for the instruction of travellers, but that 
it has its living and very practical uses. Wait, 
too, a moment at the south transept door, and 
see the venerable Archbishop depart, Outside 
there is a heavy, old-fashioned landau and a bag- 
wigged coachman in sober livery of last century ; 
inside a crowd of what looks like the scum 
of Pisa. They are waiting for his Excellency, 
Monsignor Capponi, and he cannot get through 
them until he has blessed them all, and taken all 
their dirty little babies in his arms, and emptied 
his pockets of the few coppers which his charities 
have left him. This is indeed one of the " sights " 
of Pisa, and it is a sight very good for sore eyes. 
But I have another motive in speaking thus 
briefly of the important Duomo : it is, in truth, 
that I may have space to speak more fully of its 
central feature, which, being an object of devo- 
tion intimately associated with the history and 
people of Pisa, and not merely an object of art, 
has been dismissed by some guide-books in two 



S. MARIA SOTTO GLI ORGANI 165 

or three lines. This is Santa Maria sotto gli 
Organic chief miracle-picture of the Commune 
and City of Pisa. 

The picture is unquestionably Byzantine. Mor- 
rona opines that it was the work of one of the 
colony of Greek artists resident in Pisa, and was 
painted at the end of the eleventh or beginning 
of the twelfth century. 1 He is no doubt right 
as to its great antiquity, but it is more likely to 
have been brought to Italy, like so many other 
objects, by some crusading knight returning from 
the East. There are many stories, vague and 
unproved all of them, as to how the picture came 
to Pisa. The favourite tradition is that it came 
from the Castle of Lombrici in the Lucchese 
territory. The Count of Lombrici was at war 
with the Republic of Lucca, and the Pisan Re- 
public lent him 200 fighting men. They were 
unable to hold the Castle against the Lucchesi, 
but managed to make good their escape, bring- 
ing with them the Madonna, which had been 
venerated in the Castle Oratory. There is 
nothing miraculous in the story, but it is not as 
well authenticated as some miracles. 

The Madonna sotto gli Organi — so called, by the 
way, because the picture was once attached to a 
pillar below the organ — has certainly been in Pisa 
since the thirteenth century. When Charles VIII. 

1 Alessandro Morrona, " Pisa Illustrata," vol. i. p. 449. Pisa, 
1812. A noteworthy book. 



i 66 PISA 

of France entered Pisa on the 9th November 
1494 in his character of Deliverer, the cult 
was flourishing, and from that day the records of 
it are full and unbroken. There is one fact of 
great interest about the Pisan Madonna : that 
until the 13th December 1789 there is no record 
of any mortal eye ever having beheld it after 
it had once been veiled in the Cathedral. The 
picture was covered by seven veils : it would be 
moved to a different position, placed over a 
special altar, carried about the Church and city 
in procession, but it was never unveiled. It is 
quite certain that at least for three centuries after 
Charles's coming no one ever saw it. In a MS. 
History of the Churches of Pisa by a certain 
Canon Ottavio d'Abramo, which is preserved in 
the Archives of the Chapter, the story is told 
how the Archbishop of Pisa, del Pozzo, a Pied- 
montese, so recently as the year 1607, resolved 
to break with tradition and see the Madonna. 
He took unto himself two of the Canons, Dome- 
nico Sabini and Camillo Ciurini, and a workman, 
and in their presence began to remove the veils. 
When he got to the seventh veil he was seized 
with a shivering fit, and cried out in his dialect 
(so circumstantial is the narrative) : " Covrila, 
covrila, peesto ! " He died soon afterwards ; Canon 
Sabini cut his throat with a razor ; Canon Ciurini 
lived but a short while and died in poverty; the 
workman became blind. So runs the story. 




zynunaatno dc//co<x>. ueiymc cldtco do jot/o aicOr^cuu, 
vaicra/a riet'/a C/ucra ■jM-inicczra/o .Tuancu 



r/co/xr/a, // r//' /J Giuana J70O 



yf,~^.. /..J 



Santa iMaria sotto gli Organi, Pisa 



To J ace />. 166 



A HERO IN PISAN ANNALS 167 

In 1596 occurred the great and disastrous fire 
in the Duomo. A hero in Pisan annals, Curtius 
(fit name for the leap he took), the son of Vincent 
Ferrini, plunged into the Cathedral when it was 
raining molten lead and saved the picture. Even 
then no attempt was made to see it. It was 
placed in the Baptistery and not restored to its 
altar in the Cathedral until the 16th November 
1604. It was "uncovered" and carried in pro- 
cession only seven times in the seventeenth cen- 
tury, the last occasion on the 7th November 
1684, for a great occasion, the delivery of Vienna 
from the Turk by John Sobieski. But let the 
reader take careful note that "uncovered" (sco- 
perta, scoprimentd) did not in those days mean 
"unveiling." It meant that the picture was taken 
out of the shrine in which it was locked, but not 
that the veils were removed from in front of it. At 
length, on the 13th December 1789, by order of 
the Grand Duke Peter Leopold — like his brother 
the Emperor Joseph a bit of a " Sacristan," and, 
though devout, a bit of a Febronian — the historic 
Madonna di sotto gli Organi was completely un- 
veiled for the first known time in history. It was 
immediately recognised to be a Byzantine picture 
of great antiquity. On the book held by the Bam- 
bino is written in Greek characters the 1 2th verse 
of the eighth chapter of St. John's Gospel : Ego 
sum lux mundi. Qui sequitur me non ambulat in 
tenebris, sed habebit lumen vitcz ; and over the halo 



i 68 PISA 

of the Bambino is a monogram signifying Mater 
Dei. Morrona made a careful examination of it, 
and has minutely described what he saw. 1 The 
picture was removed from its shrine on the 15th 
January 1790, and, with due precautions, was 
entrusted to the Pisan artist Giovanni Tempesti 
for restoration. Tempesti also made a copy of 
it from which my reproduction is taken. The 
picture has been unveiled — of course now literally 
— eleven times in the present century, the last 
three occasions being in 1852, 1870, and 1897. 
In 1846 a terrible earthquake shook Pisa; the 
Church of St. Michael fell in ; there was much 
damage to property, but no loss of life or injury 
to limb. In thanksgiving for this deliverance the 
Madonna was solemnly crowned on the Feast of 
the Assumption in 1847 in the presence of the 
Archbishop, the Gonfaloniere, the Knights of 
St. Stephen in their white Cappse Magnae, the 
Professors of the University, and a host of the 
regular and secular clergy, and of the civil and 
military authorities. When the cult is sufficiently 
ancient a miracle-picture is usually crowned. Will 
the function seem childish to some readers? 
'Tis but a species of symbolical and ceremonial 
tribute to the Heavenly Powers. Do we not in 
England crown our pictures and chandeliers with 
holly and evergreens in honour of Him who 
made the season joyful for us ? The Madonna 

1 Op. cit., vol. i. p. 449 et seq. 



A MARVELLOUS ESCAPE 169 

of Montenero was crowned so long ago as 1690 ; 
it had been impossible to crown the Madonna of 
Pisa in the past as she had never been unveiled. 
The crowning consists in affixing to the picture, 
on the heads of the Madonna and the Bambino, 
crowns of gold or silver and precious stones. 
Santa Maria sotto gli Organi was unveiled in 
1897 in honour of the Jubilee of the Coronation. 
A terrible and heartrending disaster occurred. 
On the 29th May, in the packed Basilica, a cry 
of "Fire!" a panic-stricken stampede, seven or 
eight poor wretches trampled to death, and scores 
of others gravely injured. One poor mother was 
knocked down, and her little child, not two years 
old, was whirled away from her among the tramp- 
ling crowd, she saw not whither. When the 
ambulance came over from the neighbouring 
hospital to recover the dead and wounded, the 
child was found under a bench, smiling and 
happy, a little dazed, but without so much as a 
bruise. The grateful mother has put the little 
pink "festa" frock it wore at the time in a glass 
case, and had this affixed to the pillar in front of 
the Altar of the Madonna of Pisa, thereby tender- 
ing public thanks to Heaven for so marvellous 
an escape. The little frock of baby Bertelli is 
now one of the most conspicuous objects of the 
shrine, and surely the mother's faith and gratitude 
must be writ in. golden characters in the registers 
of the Recording Angel. Search out, I once 



170 PISA 

more say, search out the miracle-picture of a 
place, if ever you would come to know the inti- 
mate pulsations of the Tuscan heart, the finest 
qualities of the Tuscan soul. 

The Altar of the Madonna sotto gli Organi 
is on the Gospel side of the Choir, just by the 
door of the Canons' Sacristy. Many lamps burn 
before it. It has a fine silver frontal. Votive 
offerings hang on all sides, and there are many 
in the Sacristy behind the Altar, one, an offer- 
ing from the jockeys of the Italian Newmarket, 
Barbericina, hard by Pisa, being an effective 
conjunction of two silver-gilt horses' heads, a 
saddle, and other insignia of sport. Over the 
Altar is a silver door blazing with jewels, and 
behind this door is the venerable image of Santa 
Maria sotto gli Organi. The door is locked by 
two keys, both necessary for reaching the pic- 
ture ; one is kept by the Archbishop, the other 
by the Sindaco of Pisa. It therefore needs both 
ecclesiastical and municipal consent to expose the 
picture. There are no stated times for unveil- 
ing the Madonna. The ceremony would only 
take place at a time of intercession for the avert- 
ing of some great calamity, or to render thanks 
for deliverance from some great evil. If all goes 
well with the Pisans in these coming years, as I 
pray God with all my heart it may, Santa Maria 
sotto gli Organi will not be unveiled until 1947, 
the first centenary of her glorious coronation. 



THE KNIGHTS OF ST. STEPHEN 171 

Among churches next in order of interest to 
the Duomo comes the Church of the Order of 
the Knights of Saint Stephen, situated in the 
Piazza de' Cavalieri, as beautiful if not as im- 
posing a piazza as any in all Italy. The Church 
is hung with Moorish flags and trophies of war, 
taken by the Knights from the Barbary pirates 
and the devastating Turk, and with quaint figure- 
heads and other portions of Moorish and Turkish 
galleys that were once towed in captive to the 
harbour of Leghorn. There is no other sight 
like it in the world. The Church is the design of 
Vasari, and was begun in 1565. The richly 
decorated ceiling is covered with paintings illus- 
trative of the history of the Order by Cigoli, 
Ligozzi and Allori. And note the splendid 
rococo High Altar of chocolate-coloured por- 
phyry picked out with gold and surmounted by 
the white marble figure in glory of Pope St. 
Stephen, the Patron of the Order. Adjoining 
the church is the imposing Conventual Palace of 
the Knights, once a famous school of practical 
chivalry, now a habitation of certain students of 
the University. 

The Religious and Military Order of St. 
Stephen was founded by Cosimo, first Grand 
Duke of Tuscany [whose statue stands before 
the Palace stairs], so lately as 156 1. It was 
placed under the patronage of St. Stephen, 
Pope and Martyr, because Duke Cosimo had 



172 PISA 

already gained a decisive victory on the Saint's 
feast-day, the 2nd of August, and he took it as 
of good augury. The Military Knights might 
marry and hold property ; the Religious Knights 
took the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. 
They lived a monastic life under the rule of St. 
Benedict, and had care of the Church and its fine 
functions. The objects of the Order were to rid 
the Mediterranean of pirates, redeem the poor 
Christian captives, and propagate the Christian 
religion. They did good service at the battle 
of Lepanto — a sufficiently critical moment for 
Christendom. The Cross of the Order is of the 
same shape as that of the Knights of Malta, but 
red instead of white. It figures largely in Pisan 
heraldry, for the knights had the privilege of 
adding it to their arms on a Chief of Augmen- 
tation. 

There have been some few Englishmen among 
the Knights, as is shown by the briefs now pre- 
served in the Pisan Record Office (Archivio di 
Stato). As for instance : — 

1. Thomas and Henry Joseph, sons of my 
Lord Clifford of Chudleigh, vested the former 
at Florence on the 14th May 17 12, and Henry 
Joseph at Pistoia on the 24th July 1720. 

2. Captain Francis Acton, admitted at San 
Savino, near Pisa, on the 18th December 1768. 

3. Robert Nangle, 15th March 171 2. 

4. Thomas, described as the son of Count 



DELIGHTFUL EXCURSIONS 173 

Gherardo Tyrell, invested on the 21st October 

1738. 

5. Captain Michael Jerome O'Kelly and Canon 
John Emmanuel O'Kelly, the Captain invested 
on the 28th April 1742, the Canon on the 27th 
September 1788. 

6. Caesar Walter Kennedy Laurie, to take 
a very recent instance, invested on the 14th 
October 1851. 

7. And to take the last instance of a British 
name, though it belonged to an Austrian subject, 
Count Maximilian O'Donnel, who was invested 
on the 27th December 1851. 1 

The Order was swept away by the French 
Revolution, but was revived again in a modified 
form in 181 7. The Italian Revolution once 
more swept it away beyond hope of revival in 
1859, and its Church and property became the 
property of the State. Alas ! that modern Italy 
should not be a little more tender of the memories 
of her past glories. 

Delightful are the excursions round about Pisa. 
There is a steam-tram along the banks of the 
Arno to the mouth, where, at the conjunction of 
the river and the sea, stands a trim little watering- 
place, Bocca d'Arno. It is worth while to de- 

1 Information kindly furnished, at much trouble, by my cour- 
teous and learned friend, Professor Clemente Lupi, Archivist of 
the Pisa Record Office. 



174 P!SA 

scend half way at the tram station of San Pier 
in Grado, and see the old Basilica of this name. 
It marks the spot where, says tradition, the 
Prince of the Apostles, coming from Antioch to 
make of Rome the Mother and Mistress of 
Churches, first set foot upon Italian soil, and 
here he erected his first Altar in the Peninsula. 
Clement, the fourth Pope in succession to Peter, 
is said to have built a church here, and the 
present Basilica is supposed to have been begun 
at the end of the tenth century. Portraits of 
the Popes from Peter to John XIV. (obit. 985) 
run round the walls of the nave above the arches, 
and below the portraits curious frescoes illustrat- 
ing the lives of SS. Peter and Paul. 

The steam-tram likewise runs in the opposite 
direction, right into the heart of the smiling 1 
Pisan contrade to Calci, where there is a much 
admired Charterhouse. Hence you may go to 
Nicosia hard by, and see the Convent of the 
Friars Minor, which shelters in lowly obscurity 
so famous a man as Fra Agostino da Montefeltro, 
the modern Chrysostom. And from Calci you 
may ascend the conical Verruca, on the summit 
of which are the remains of the most formidable 
fort of the fighting Republic of Pisa. The fort 
is well known to students of the Tuscan tongue 
as having contained what is reputed to be the 
oldest existing inscription in the vernacular (a.d. 
1 103). The authenticity of the inscription (which 



CAMEL-BREEDING 175 

is brief enough — "a - di - dodici - gugno - mciil") 
has been disputed by the learned, and is now 
under consideration of perhaps the most com- 
petent authority in all Italy to decide such a 
subject. He has not yet pronounced judgment. 

The handsome Royal Park of San Rossore is 
but three miles' drive from the centre of Pisa. It 
is well worth going there if only to see a flourish- 
ing herd of camels that have become indigenous 
to Tuscan soil. The first camels were introduced 
into Tuscany by the Grand Duke Ferdinand II. 
in 1622. Others taken by General Arighetti 
from the Turks in a battle near Vienna were 
likewise sent home in 1663. Camels were fit- 
fully introduced between 1700 and 1738, but 
apparently only as curiosities. Francis II. of 
Lorraine (reigned 1 737-1 745), the founder of 
the new dynasty, first took the matter up 
seriously. He established the camels at San 
Rossore, and having procured twenty more, 
thirteen males and seven females, he attempted 
breeding with complete success. By 1785 the 
herd numbered one hundred and thirty-four, and 
had increased in 1789 to one hundred and ninety- 
six. Other Italian sovereigns, envious of the 
Grand Duke's success, tried camel-breeding at 
home, but failure was the result, nor could the 
camel be acclimatised in any other part of Tus- 
cany except San Rossore. Even here a succes- 
sion of cold winters affects them unfavourably. 



176 PISA 

The severe winters of 181 1 and 18 12 reduced 
them by one half; in 18 14 there were but one 
hundred and eighteen. In 1878 there were one 
hundred and twenty, and in 1900 the number is 
about one hundred and fifty. 

The males are used in the carrying of wood 
which has been hewn upon the estate. Each 
camel can carry about 1000 lbs. at a time. As 
a rule, only one male is used each year for 
breeding purposes. The camels of Pisa breed 
from the middle of February to the end of 
April. The young are weak and weedy for the 
first two days, and have to be held up by the 
attendants when they want to suck. The late 
Professor Luigi Lombardini, who had studied 
their habits closely, considers this may be a sign 
of degeneration, but the animals that come to 
maturity are all fine specimens, and can do the 
work of an African camel. The camels of San 
Rossore, like all others, strip all the leaves they 
can off the trees up to a height of eight feet or so. 
When leaves fail they will eat prickly bushes, but 
grass only as a last resort. There are two large 
sheds for the camels, one for the males and one 
for the females. But the females live in the 
open, except during the last four months of preg- 
nancy and when suckling. The camel detests 
rain. If in the open, they will huddle together 
under the trees ; if in their sheds, they will stay 
within, even if their supply of fodder is exhausted, 





Photograph by Dr. E. Barnes 

1'isan Camels, Mother and Child 

To face p, 1 76 



PORTO PISANO 177 

The young are weaned after twelve to fifteen 
months. If it is required to wean them sooner, 
the mother is clipped so as to become unrecog- 
nisable, and after a futile search and an unpleasant 
reception from six or seven other mothers, the 
youngster resigns himself to more solid food. 
Altogether an interesting study and an interest- 
ing sight, these camels, which have been success- 
fully reared so far from home. 1 

It is a far cry from camels to the Porto Pisano, 
the old port of the Republic, and it is a long 
way from Pisa to its former port. The fact that 
Italian towns have given their names to nations 
and to countries sometimes breeds confusion. 
The Arno was navigable centuries ago, and Pisa 
was a port . and had an arsenal ; but the Port of 
Pim or Porto Pisano formed no part of the city 
of Pisa, and was itself a flourishing commercial 
centre and fortified town situated on the sea- 
coast, just outside and to the north of the modern 
Leghorn. The Porto Pisano was defended by 
seven graceful towers, one of which, the white 
marble Marzocco, built under Florentine dominion 
so recently as 1423, is still standing in all its glory, 
and is now used as a coastguard station. There 
are the remains of two others, much more ancient 

1 Most of these interesting particulars regarding the camels of 
San Rossore have been taken from the interesting work on the 
camel in general of the late Professor Luigi Lombardini, "Sui 
Cammelli." Pisa, 1879. 

M 



178 PISA 

— the Maltarchiata and the Magnale. The tower 
called the " Toretta " has given its name to the 
busy industrial suburb of Leghorn, "La Toretta," 
near the railway station, where stand the rolling- 
mills, the glassworks, the flour and maize mills, 
the ^paste" factories, and the dusty coalyards. 
The Porto Pisano was defended by chains. Every 
traveller goes to the Campo Santo, and there 
sees the chains which the Genoese Republic took 
from the Pisan Republic in 1362, and which the 
city of Genoa restored to the city of Pisa in i860 
after the accomplishment of unity, as a pledge of 
the new brotherly love. I have heard more than 
one traveller say that these chains defended the 
port of the city of Pisa. That is not so : they 
defended the entrance to the Porto Pisano, or 
port of the Republic of Pisa, situated nine miles 
to the south of the Arno. 

I cannot here write the history of the once 
busy and important Porto Pisano. 1 Like Leg- 
horn later on, it was a commercial emporium, 
and seems to have been used not only by the 
Pisans, but also by the Venetians, the Lucchesi, 
the Florentines, and the Bolognese. It was 
almost destroyed by Genoa in 1284, and after 
the Genoese assault in 1363 it gradually lost all 
importance and fell into disrepair. When the 

1 But see an interesting work to which I am indebted for some 
of these particulars, " II Porto Pisano : la sua difesa, il suo governo, 
la sua interna amministrazione," by Doctor Pietro Vigo. Rome, 
1898. 



THE RUINS OF A CITY 179 

Florentines bought it in 142 1, it was already 
blocked by the silting up of the sand. Malaria, 
too, helped to work its ruin. In 1541 it could 
only admit row-boats, and soon after was entirely 
abandoned. Leghorn took its place, and now 
not a single traveller that I ever could hear of 
comes out of his way to gaze upon the slender 
remnants of what was once a palpitating centre 
of mediaeval life. 

How vain it is in one small section of a small 
book to try and write of a city that was really 
a nation, but I have here spoken of three things 
connected with it of which the handiest sources 
say but little, and here and there, perhaps, some 
stray traveller may thank me for having directed 
his footsteps into fields fresh and pastures new 
to him. 




IV 



VOLTERRA 



Volterra is far from the beaten track and diffi- 
cult of access. Starting from Leghorn, the travel- 
ler has to traverse two branch lines and to change 
at two country junctions. It will take him three 
hours and more to do the fifty miles of railway 
that lie between the Tuscan port and Volterra 
Station. And Volterra Station is by no means 
Volterra city. The town itself is perched high 
upon a hill that no railway can ever hope to 
scale, and it needs a two hours' climb up a zig- 
zag road in a shaky diligence ere the traveller 
finds himself in ''lordly Volaterrse." The dili- 
gence has set him down close by the Albergo 
Na'zionale, the only hostelry of the city, which, be 
it said once for all, is the very pattern and model 



HEAPS TO SEE 181 

of an old-fashioned Tuscan inn, clean, comfort- 
able, cheap, with a plain kitchen and a good, 
sound wine. So old-fashioned is it that they 
have neither waiter nor chambermaid. The inn 
is run entirely by the family, all of them smiling, 
genial, eager to serve. They speak no language 
save the purest Tuscan, but they have quick wits 
and a knack of divining the unlettered stranger's 
needs. 

The wise traveller will not hurry away from 
Volterra. There is heaps to see. Four thou- 
sand years ago, six or seven hundred years before 
Troy was besieged, Volterra, queen of the Etrus- 
can cities, was in the zenith of her glory, and 
vestiges of that glory still remain. In her Etrus- 
can days the population of the city, which is now 
but 5500, must have been quite 100,000, and 
the huge Cyclopean walls which surrounded the 
ancient city were of a circumference of about 
8000 yards. Portions of these walls, 40 feet high 
and 12 feet thick, still survive. The southerly 
side of the town forms a line with the site of 
the ancient walls, and it thus happens that one 
of the original Etruscan gates, which is still 
standing, the famous Porta all' Arco, forms also 
one of the entrances to the modern city. The 
gate is 25 feet high and 12^ feet deep; its arch 
is formed of nineteen huge blocks of stone, all 
without a vestige of cement or mortar. Outside 
the Porta San Francesco, a mile or more from 



1 82 VOLTERRA 

the town, are further remains of Etruscan walls 
showing the vast extent of the ancient city. Out- 
side the Porta Fiorentina, to the north, is an 
Etruscan gate called the Porta di Diana, stand- 
ing in solitary glory, which shows better than 
any other example the true character of Cyclo- 
pean masonry. Beyond the Porta di Diana is the 
Etruscan Necropolis (ask for i Marmini if you 
want to find it), and outside the Porta a Selci, 
beyond the Convent of San Girolamo, another 
Etruscan place of burial, with the urns in their 
places. The local Museum — Museo Guarnacci — 
a model of good order and perspicuous arrange- 
ment, 1 contains nearly six hundred Etruscan 
cinerary urns of curious and beautiful workman- 
ship. Fully two-thirds of them are made of 
alabaster, and are thus a convincing witness to 
the time-honoured antiquity of the alabaster in- 
dustry, which is still the mainstay and support 
of Volterra. Indeed the whole city is redolent 
of Etruscan traditions and Etruscan influences, 
and it would be impossible rightly to compre- 
hend many of the existing features of Volterra — 
not even the alabaster industry — without bearing 
in mind its venerable origin. 

Antiquity — intense antiquity — is the dominant 
note of the place. One of the historians of Vol- 

1 " Le Muse'e etrusque de Volterra est un des plus intelligement 
distribue's que j'ai visite"s';" so says M. Paul Bourget in his "Sen- 
sations d'ltalie," p. 20. 




Photograph by 



The Porta all' Arco, Volterra 



Alinari, Florence 



To /ace p. 182 



VOLTERRA'S LORDLY BEARING 183 

terra assigns Noah as its original founder, and 
Vul, the grandson of Noah (hence Vol-terra) as 
the maker of its greatness. The very country 
round about suggests the Flood — either that or 
a very early stage in the evolution of matter 
without form and void. Low bare hills and 
hillocks of clay, deeply fissured by the strong 
rains and riven and cracked by wind and sun, 
undulate on all sides with a certain savage gran- 
deur that is not unimpressive. It seems like a 
prehistoric peep, and it would serve Mr. E. T. 
Reed admirably as a background ; indeed, as we 
toil up the steep ascent in the diligence we almost 
expect to see some of his playful monsters sprawl- 
ing on the mudhills, and leering at us with that 
genial desire to devour which he has conveyed 
with so much humour. 

The city of Volterra is finely placed, and with 
its massive fortress and towers still has a very 
lordly bearing. It is 17 14 feet above the sea- 
level, a height which effectually protects it from 
the malarial dangers of the close-lying Maremma. 
The strong bracing air which sweeps through 
this city set upon a hill is the foe of epidemic 
diseases, and leaves them no time to take root. 
The very view is invigorating — it is the sight 
that may be seen from almost any point of the 
Etruscan Littoral. To the west the Tyrrhenian 
Sea, Corsica, Elba, and the Tuscan Archipelago, 
and farther north the Gulf of Spezia and the 



1 84 VOLTERRA 

Ligurian coast ; while to the north and north- 
east are the marble mountains of Carrara and 
a long range of snow-capped Apennines rising 
like a great grey crenulated wall in the middle 
of the long Peninsula. 

The mediaeval fortress of Volterra is now a 
formidable prison-house. When last I visited it 
there were 475 prisoners within its walls, all of 
them murderers. It is an uncanny sensation to 
look upon nearly five hundred human beings 
each one of whom has taken the life of at least 
one other human being. One hundred and forty- 
nine of them were condemned for life, and that 
meant murder of a brutal and cold-blooded de- 
scription ; the remainder were imprisoned for 
periods ranging from fifteen to thirty years, and 
that would mean murder with extenuating cir- 
cumstances — murder the result of inconstancy in 
a sweetheart, of frailty in a wife, or faithlessness 
in a friend. The confinement is rigorously soli- 
tary and cellular ; the exercise courts are cellular ; 
there are cellular smithies and cellular workshops ; 
nay, the very chapel is cellular. Two tiers of 
cells run one above the other, and the prisoner 
in each, while unable to see his fellow-convicts, 
can through a long narrow loophole see the altar 
and the priest who is saying mass. As I walked 
round the ramparts of the great fortress I could 
look down into the rows of high-walled exer- 
cise courts — not more than 10 feet by 10, I 



THE PRISON 185 

should say — in each of which the convict was 
taking the hour of exercise which he is allowed 
daily. Every prisoner saluted respectfully, and 
showed his white teeth in a pleasant smile, glad 
at the sight of any fresh face. Italian prisons 
are models of good order and cleanliness, and the 
cheerfulness and natural patience of the Italian 
temperament does much to lighten the labour 
of Italian prison officials. The convicts get two 
full meals of beans, lentils, or paste, cooked in 
lard, and meat on Sundays and holidays. Every 
prisoner may spend 25 centesimi a day if he has 
it or can earn it ; therefore wine is by no means 
an unknown luxury in the prison. I was there at 
Carnival time, and the prison clerks were busy 
with the correspondence entailed in acknowledg- 
ing the receipt of money sent by relatives in the 
hope of introducing some of the merriment of 
the joyous season within the prison walls. The 
system of rigorous solitary confinement leads to 
frequent cases of madness. Indeed there is often 
talk of the Italian Government abolishing the 
system on account of the great expense of main- 
taining numerous criminal lunatic asylums. The 
cellular system does not admit of work being 
found for every one. What can a stone-mason 
or a husbandman do in a cell ? Enforced idle- 
ness, the inability to read or write, the utterly 
blank existence, never exchanging a word with a 
soul except the chaplains and the guards, wholly 



1 86 VOLTERRA 

deprives many a poor wretch of wits which were 
none too strong to begin with. Yet the general 
impression of visiting any Italian prison is of 
treatment humane to excess. 

And talking of mad-houses leads me to speak 
of the Convent of San Girolamo outside the Porta 
a Selci, which, from being a flourishing dwelling- 
place of the Sons of St. Francis, has been con- 
verted into a Pauper Asylum. The Convent 
became Government property in the suppression 
of 1866 ; the Friars are allowed to inhabit a 
small portion ; the rest of the building is used as 
an Asylum for women. The windows of what 
is still part of the Convent look straight down 
upon the Asylum yard, where I saw a hundred 
or more of these poor wretches jabbering and 
grimacing in every stage of madness. It was a 
shuddering sight, and I could not but pity the 
poor Friars Minor, who are accorded a corner of 
their own house on the condition of receiving 
under their roof the most terrible of all guests. 
Many Italians do not seem to realise that such 
treatment of a Religious Order which has so 
greatly contributed to their country's glory 
affects us Englishmen unfavourably ; indeed, that 
it passes our comprehension. All the world 
venerates Francis of Assisi, and however frail 
and faulty his sons may be, most of us can still 
see in them a reflex of their holy founder. His 
spirit was most manifest in the present case : 'tis 



A PORTENTOUS LANDSLIP 187 

I who am grumbling and growling because my 
artistic sensibilities have been outraged — not a 
murmur, not a word of complaint, escaped any- 
one of the two or three Friars of San Girolamo 
with whom I had speech. 

One of the great sights of Volterra is le Baize, 
a portentous landslip, about a mile outside the 
Porta San Francesco. The subsidence is still 
active, and every year great masses of the sandy 
precipice fall away with a roar like thunder and a 
shock as of earthquake. All efforts to stop this 
devastation have been fruitless, and, indeed, all 
efforts to stop it have, I fancy, now been aban- 
doned. In the seventeenth century the beautiful 
church of San Giusto, full of frescoes by Giotto, 
was swallowed up in the devouring earth. The 
new church of San Giusto, built to replace it on 
a spot further away from le Baize, is itself now 
fairly near the hungry precipice. The Camaldo- 
lese Abbey of San Salvatore, resting apparently 
on a surer foundation, has been left standing on 
the eastern side of the vasty chasm. It was 
"suppressed" and sold. The present owner 
has converted the long rows of cells into flats of 
two or three rooms each ; the tenants are workers 
in the fields and artisans, who pay the modest 
rental of five livres (three shillings and fourpence) 
a month. 

The Volterrani are a diligent, frugal, orderly 
race, reliable, honest, contented, and full of a 



1 88 VOLTERRA 

quiet dignity and sobriety that seems born of the 
place. Their pride sits well upon them, and finds 
its justification in every stone. People who look 
to Noah as the founder of their city, who daily go 
in and out of a gate that is 4000 years old, who 
dwell in the shadow of a building like the Palazzo 
dei Priori and beneath the walls of a noble for- 
tress like the Rocca, who count among their 
great men St. Linus the immediate successor of 
St. Peter, and St. Leo surnamed the Great, a 
people which in a.d. 1900 is still engaged upon 
the same beautiful industry that it practised in 
1900 B.C., has indeed motive for legitimate pride. 
The Alabaster Industry is well worthy of 
consideration. Speaking generally, alabaster is 
nowhere to be found in the world outside the 
Province of Pisa. Sweeping as this statement 
may seem, it will yet stand the test of examina- 
tion provided that we are speaking secundum 
idem. Oriental alabaster, the alabaster of Holy 
Scripture, which is found chiefly in Egypt, is not 
what is nowadays ordinarily understood by alaba- 
ster, but is really a species of marble : it is a 
carbonate of lime, whereas the alabaster of Vol- 
terra is a hydrated sulphate of lime, a distinction 
sufficiently emphatic to mark the sharp difference 
between the two. I lay stress upon this fact 
because it is important, as it is also interesting, 
to show that the rough material of an industry of 
world-wide celebrity and world-wide diffusion is 




Photograph by Alinari, Florence 

Pope St. Linus, by Luca drlla Robbia, Volterra 

To /ace />. 18 



THE ALABASTER CAVES 189 

really confined within a very limited corner of 
one particular country of the globe. At least 
the Volterrani maintain that none of the alaba- 
ster-like substances found in Derbyshire, Savoy, 
the Tyrol or Lombardy, are worthy of the name 
of alabaster. 

There are two kinds of alabaster, and they are 
found in two separate districts of the Province. 
Veined, striped, and spotted alabaster, opaque 
creamy-white alabaster, grey bardiglio, and the 
rich yellow agata, are to be found in the caves 
lying round about Volterra. The white alabaster 
used in sculpture, a luminous and transparent 
stone of faintly cerulean tint, is only to be found 
in the valley of the Marmolaio near Castellina, 
some twenty miles distant from Volterra. These, 
in a rough division, are the two sorts ; and these 
with clearer definition are the two districts. 

I have been all over the " Venelle " Caves near 
Pomaia, the property of Signor Ferruccio Ciam- 
polini and his brother, Signor Ottaviano. It is 
quite a remarkable experience, and one I recom- 
mend to the traveller in search of the unique. 
Seven or eight cavernous mouths at the foot of 
the gentle slope of the valley of the Marmolaio 
lead us into a network of galleries which pene- 
trate far into the bowels of the earth, and whose 
internal communications running alongside the 
valley are over 1700 yards in length. These 
galleries are all the result of fruitful excavation. 



190 VOLTERRA 

Begun only some two hundred years ago, they 
seem quite a matter of recent incident in the 
history of an industry where everything is so 
ancient. The descent is at first spiral, and this 
enables the stratification to be very clearly 
observed. It is sufficiently curious and puzzling 
to the unscientific mind. First a preat mass of 
hard crystallised limestone rock, some twenty-five 
feet in depth, called by the workers "il masso" 
or "la panchina," and then a stratum of greyish- 
blue marl of a depth of four feet ; again the mass 
of limestone, and again the stratum of marl. Four 
of these double strata have been laid bare in parts 
of the Venelle Caves, and seven or eight in the 
Maesta Caves of Castellina on the opposite side 
of the valley. 

It is these huge masses of limestone that form 
the matrix of the alabaster nodules, which are 
found embedded within it at irregular distances. 
The nodules lie in two, three, and even four 
layers, one above the other, and a thin streak of 
argillaceous matter mixed with fibrous limestone, 
forming what is called the " traversone," marks 
the divisions of the layers, and serves in some 
measure as a guide to the whereabouts of the 
blocks. At the end of each cavern you will find 
two or three men working away with their small 
T-shaped picks by the dim light of the unpro- 
tected flaming oil-lamps of Etruscan pattern 
which, by a singular tenacity of tradition, are 



THE EXCAVATORS 191 

still in use in the district. In one case the block 
of alabaster will be already projecting from its 
bed of limestone, and the operator is carefully 
picking away all round it until he shall have 
extracted the complete block. In another, search 
is still being made for alabaster, and the workman 
is vigorously beating down the wall of limestone 
until he lights upon what looks like the white 
nose of a nodule. Bringing his lamp close to 
the glistening patch, and shading it with his 
hand, the fine translucence of a piece of genuine 
alabaster is thrown out into startling relief, and 
the operator begins to pick gingerly so as not 
to injure his prize. When the "masso" is over- 
obstinate in yielding the wished -for nodules, 
when, that is to say, there seems a likelihood of 
much picking in the limestone without treasure 
trove, two holes are drilled in the rock, and 
blasting on a miniature scale is resorted to. The 
average weight of the blocks is 6 cwts., but 
blocks from 17 to 20 cwts. are of common occur- 
rence. Signor Ottaviano Ciampolini in 1894 sent 
a block to the Antwerp Exhibition that weighed 
58 cwts. and measured 5J feet. But such a find 
is altogether phenomenal. It will thus be seen 
that it is impossible to sculpt life-size figures in 
alabaster. 

The excavators only work six hours a day, 
and never for more than two hours at a time. 
The bad air of the caves renders this regula- 



192 VOLTERRA 

tion imperative, for there are no shafts sunk 
anywhere, and the atmosphere of the remoter 
portions of the caves is hot and stifling. Still 
the occupation seems to be a healthy one, and 
one of the foremen in the Venelle Caves told 
me that the workers all lived to a good old age. 
They have a belief, too, that the fine white 
alabaster powder which they inhale in the pro- 
cess of picking — and they must swallow many 
a kilo in the course of a lifetime — has strong 
hygienic properties. Work is begun at seven 
in the morning and continued to nine o'clock ; 
is resumed from eleven to one ; and again from 
three in the afternoon till five o'clock. The 
d6bris of the limestone matrix is removed from 
the caves in baskets by boys (locally known as 
ciuchetti, i.e. young donkeys). Both their hands 
are occupied in carrying the basket, and they 
are thus unable to light their way up with one 
of the flaming lamps, but the little fellows, with 
something of the instinct of bats, have learned 
to come up securely in the dark ; the greater 
moisture of the centre of the path is a sure guide 
to their bare feet. They account themselves 
passing rich and happy on a wage of sixpence 
a day. 

Water is a great enemy to the excavating 
operations. There are several bits of ingenious 
engineering in the caves for carrying off the 
water which has been struck, but deep wells and 




Photograph by Mrs. Caumichael 

A Group of Ciuciiktti in the Alabaster Caves, Voi.tkrra 

To face p. 192 



SOME OTHER CAVES 193 

pools exist in the cavernous recesses which would 
be a grave danger to the stranger who should 
venture into these labyrinths alone. In most of 
the galleries a man of six foot can walk com- 
fortably without stooping, but in others, where 
the water has oozed through and reduced the 
paths to impassable mud, the limestone debris 
has been thickly laid down as pavement, witli 
the result that the height of the gallery has been 
considerably lowered. There are some twelve 
principal caves in the Castellina district, and per- 
haps a similar number of known outcrops, which 
if worked would, it is supposed, yield the same 
pure white diaphanous alabaster. Geologically 
the caves belong to the later Miocene and 
earlier Pliocene systems. Professor Capellini, 
somewhere about the year i860, was the first 
to discover in them the presence of fossil re- 
mains, notably the minute fresh-water Crustacea 
Cypris. 1 

I was so fascinated by my experiences in the 
Venelle Caves, that I also visited some of the 
caves of the Volterra district. But they seem 
small and insignificant after the grandiose gal- 
leries of Castellina and Pomaia. The stratifica- 
tion is similar, and the method of excavation is 



1 Not a soul ever seems to come to see these wonderful caves. 
Rosignano is the station, and I dare avouch, from my own experi- 
ence, that even the chance traveller will receive a hearty welcome 
from Signor Ferruccio Ciampolini. 

N 



194 VOLTERRA 

similar, and they might have interested me if I 
had not just come from Pomaia. 

The worked alabaster industry is likewise 
divided into two strongly differentiated branches 
— firstly, sculpture, that is to say, sculptured re- 
presentations of the human form ; and secondly, 
the miscellaneous industry, that is to say, the 
countless other objects manufactured at Volterra, 
such as vases, ewers, pillars and stands, baskets, 
clock-cases, frames, toilet necessaries, animals, 
fruit, ash-trays, candelabra, crucifixes, holy-water 
stoups, and the like. These two divisions of the 
worked industry correspond also with the two 
main divisions of the rough material, and co- 
incide with the two territorial divisions which I 
have endeavoured to indicate, for the alabaster 
used in what is called sculpture comes exclu- 
sively from the Castellina district, while the 
alabaster used in the miscellaneous industry 
comes chiefly from the neighbourhood of Vol- 
terra. There is yet another point of division : 
nearly all the best sculpture of alabaster is now 
carried on at Florence, whereas the miscel- 
laneous industry is almost wholly confined to 
Volterra city. 

Walking along the by-streets of the city the 
ear is arrested by the clinking of little hammers 
and the grating rasp of files, and looking in at 
a doorway the passer-by will see two or three 
men busily engaged, with all the absorption of 



TURNERS, MODELLERS, DECORATORS 195 

true artists, in fashioning the various parts of a 
vase or a flower-basket. These men may be 
a father and two - sons, or an uncle and two 
nephews, or three men united in an informal 
partnership, or (very rarely) one man employing 
two others, and they usually unite in themselves 
the qualifications required in the production of a 
vase, one being a turner [tornitore) who gives 
it shape, the other a modeller (squadratore) who 
fashions its .pillar and base, the third a decorator 
(ornatista) who carves the decorative adjuncts of 
fruit and flowers. The master-worker of past 
days, with his busy band of workers and ap- 
prentices, has disappeared, and it is from these 
small workshops that the articles of the mis- 
cellaneous alabaster industry now go forth to 
the world. The workers sell chiefly direct to 
the proprietors of the Volterra "gallerie" A 
proprietor will bring a block of alabaster and a 
block of agata to the workshops and say : Make 
me a vase and a stand out of these ; or the 
worker will purchase the rough material himself, 
fashion different articles, and carry them to the 
" gallerie " on the chance of a sale. Then there 
is the waif and stray of the trade, often a mere 
youth, who lives a very precarious existence, 
buying a small block of alabaster when he has 
a few soldi to spare, working it into various 
articles, and selling them when he can to the 
gallerie or to the chance traveller (a rara avis 



196 VOLTERRA 

in Volterra 1 ), or carrying them even, when times 
are very bad, to the neighbouring farmhouses, 
where he is glad to exchange his works of art 
for bread and beans and a little thin red wine. 

The sculpture of alabaster used at one time to 
be carried on principally at Volterra, but about 
a quarter of a century ago this branch of the 
industry migrated to Florence, where it took 
root very firmly, and speedily assumed consider- 
able proportions. There are six or seven im- 
portant gallerie in Florence where the sculpture, 
admirably arranged, is on view to all the world. 
They also do a large export business, chiefly with 
the United States and Germany ; Americans take 
most of the modern sculpture, and Germans the 
copies from classical models. The sculpture is 
subjected to a very simple whitening process : 
the figure is immersed in water, which is gradu- 
ally raised to boiling-point and then allowed to 
become quite cold again. Great care has to be 
exercised, as too much heat would reduce the 
alabaster to plaster, and a too sudden exposure 
to the air would cause it to crack. This process 
deadens the transparency of the alabaster, and 
gives it the appearance of fine white marble. 

The alabaster industry is picking up again 
after a long period of adversity. I would that, 

1 Only about two hundred and fifty travellers — people, that is, 
who come to see the sights and antiquities of the place — visit 
Volterra in the course of a year. 



DEPLORABLE BAD TASTE 197 

with a renewal of prosperity, there would also 
come a change in the debased taste which pre- 
vails. In the sculpture classicism, late and early, 
Greek, Roman, and Canovan runs riot, together 
with products of the flashy, vulgar modernity and 
would-be realism dear to Philistines, such as 
roguish dancing girls, coquettish diving girls, 
faultlessly clad pifferari, impossibly spruce lazze- 
roni, improbably prepossessing monelli, and a 
host of other creations which cause something 
like a shudder when contemplated in cold alabas- 
ter. In the miscellaneous worked industry of 
Volterra the prevailing taste is little less deplor- 
able. The elaborate, florid design of the vases 
is such as our grandmothers in the thirties and 
forties were wont to delight in, but of the severer, 
simpler taste of the present day Volterra is all 
unconscious. There is, moreover, a certain per- 
version of taste in the selection of the objects 
worked up. A picture frame, for instance, is 
an incongruous and uncomfortable object when 
worked in alabaster. The same may be said of 
the countless little cannons with guns of agata 
and carriages of alabaster, and also of the alabaster 
representations in unblushingly realistic colours 
of fruit and flowers and birds. But the climax of 
incongruity is reached when the worker — recog- 
nising that you are a son of the nation that rules 
the waves — proudly produces an alabaster model 
of a modern twin-screw fast cruiser, fully rigged 



198 VOLTERRA 

and mounted, and equipped with all the panoply 
of war ! 

But while I make these few strictures on the 
faults in taste which are exhibited in the industry, 
it is impossible sufficiently to admire the exquisite 
skill which the workers manifest in the meanest 
objects. The secret of swift, sure deft-handed- 
ness has, more or less unconsciously, been passed 
on from father to son, and the workers are justly 
proud of the venerable antiquity of the art and 
its mellow traditions. Volterra need fear no rival 
in her special branch of the industry, for she is 
secure in customs and traditions that cannot well 
be copied, and this branch of the art at least 
would perish in any forcible attempt at trans- 
plantation. 




PORTOFERRAIO AND THE ISLAND 
OF ELBA 

Elba, though easy of access as compared with 
sortie of the interesting inland towns of Tuscany, 
seems to be little known, as it certainly is little 
frequented by English travellers. To take there- 
fore, in the first instance — with apologies to 
the well-informed — a few facts of elementary 
geography. 

Elba is the principal island of the Tyrrhenian 
Archipelago. It is situate ten miles east of the 
nearest point on the mainland of Italy, and fifty 
miles south-west of Leghorn. Its superficies is 
eighty-six square miles ; the extent of its sinuous 
coast, some seventy-one miles ; its greatest length, 
between the perpendiculars (so to speak), eighteen 



200 PORTOFERRAIO AND ELBA 

miles ; its greatest breadth, east of Cape Pina, 
six miles ; * its population some twenty - five 
thousand souls. The coast is steep and rocky ; 
the whole island one intricate mountain chain ; 
the soil ferruginous and very fertile ; the climate 
mild and healthy. Portoferraio, on the north 
coast, is the capital city, and the island contains 
four other communes — Marciana, Rio, Porto 
Longone, and Campo. Administratively, Elba 
forms part of the Province of Leghorn ; ecclesi- 
astically, it is within the mainland diocese of 
Massa Marittima. The King is represented in 
the island by a Sub-Prefect ; the Bishop of Massa 
by a Vicar-General. Excavating in the important 
iron ore mines, working the extensive Govern- 
ment Saline or saltpans, sea-fishing and seafaring, 
agriculture and viticulture, are among the chief 
industries of its hardy, laborious, and orderly 
population. 

There are two ways of getting to Elba. You 
can go from the small port of Piombino (four 
hours by train from Leghorn, six hours from 
Rome), whence a little packet-boat, taking an 
hour in the transit, runs twice daily to Porto- 
ferraio. Or, what is much pleasanter, you can 
go by Florio-Rubattino boat twice a week direct 

1 Englishmen will be able to form a better idea of the size of 
Elba by the following statistics : — The area of Malta is 95 square 
miles; of the Isle of Wight, 145; and of the Isle of Man, 227 
square miles. 



THE WAY THITHER 201 

from Leghorn. This is one of the most delight- 
ful sea-trips imaginable. The steamer touches 
first at the island of, Gorgona, then at the island 
of Capraia, proceeds thence to Marciana in Elba, 
and so along the splendid island-coast to Porto- 
ferraio. The whole journey, which is done by 
day, takes some eight hours. Sometimes — a 
contingency to be avoided — a gang of convicts, 
chained together and surveillanced by files of cara- 
bineers, will be among your fellow-passengers, 
for Gorgona and Capraia, as also Portoferraio 
and Porto Longone in Elba, and the island of 
Pianosa beyond, are important Italian convict 
establishments. Their villainous scrubby faces, 
in contrast with their farcical costume of striped 
fustian and jaunty little cap, produce a gruesome, 
shuddering effect as they sprawl there on the 
lower deck munching great hunks of bread, or 
playing at chuck-farthing to pass the time. But 
the experience is interesting, more especially if 
the brigadier is easy-going and does not resent 
your having speech with his engaging charges. 
Sometimes the boats that row out to the steamer 
at Gorgona or Capraia are manned by convicts, 
veritable galley-slaves they seem thus afloat. 
They have come to fetch off the new arrivals 
to their settlement, or it may be to bring aboard 
some prisoners who are changing. There are 
at the present moment some nine hundred and 
fifty convicts in the island of Elba, and nearly 



202 PORTOFERRAIO AND ELBA 

two thousand in the whole of the Tuscan Archi- 
pelago. 

Soon the finely - placed lighthouse of Porto- 
ferraio comes in sight, and, rounding the point, 
one of the finest sights in all Italy breaks upon 
our astonished view — the vast, deep inland bay of 
Portoferraio, which might comfortably ensconce 
in securest shelter the whole of Her Majesty's 
great navy. One turn more, round the point 
called La Linguella, which is entirely occupied 
by the convict establishment, and we are in the 
actual harbour of Portoferraio, facing, the pic- 
turesque little town with its houses piled high 
above one another, amphitheatrically grouped, 
and crowned by majestic old fortresses. 

In Portoferraio the traveller will make his 
headquarters. There is but one hostelry here 
into which the Eno-lish traveller will venture, 
the Albergo delle Api, or Bees, so called from 
the famous charge in the Buonaparte family 
arms. Baedeker calls it "fair," and as this has 
somewhat of the sound of a damnatory clause, 
I will make bold to call it "good." Good it will 
certainly seem to the real traveller accustomed 
to the world's by-ways. It is rough certainly ; 
rough it will seem to the pampered sojourner on 
the Riviera ; but it is clean, and a slight know- 
ledge of Italian will procure you simple, whole- 
some fare. In the remotest parts of Tuscany 
you can always eat well if you ask for a " bis- 



A GENERAL DESCRIPTION 203 

tecca sui ferri," or beefsteak off the grill. Add in 
warning tones "senz'aglio" (without garlic). "E 
naturale," the serving-man will reply, though but 
for your warning the grill would have been soused 
in what is said to be the best of digestives were 
but the British stomach already seasoned to it. 
And beware, too, of sage (salvia), with which they 
love to lard a plain roast of beef in quantities, so 
as to make it tasty forsooth ! 

In Elba — except the deep footprints of Napo- 
leon, and I leave these alone for the present — 
there are scarcely any "sights." There is, of 
course, the "sight" of Nature at her best and 
beautifullest, in forms unique to herself and which 
can only be seen in Elba. But the traveller 
should not neglect to ramble about the wonder- 
ful old fortifications which dominate both land 
and sea, and made Portoferraio in times past 
practically impregnable. Until recently he might 
wander there at his sweet will, but now a permit 
(never refused) from the officer in command of 
the few troops is necessary. The fortifications 
are to-day destitute of even a single cannon to 
salute the warships which occasionally call, but 
there is no doubt that Portoferraio, with its splen- 
did bay and great natural advantages, might be 
made to contribute powerfully to the safety of the 
now defenceless Tuscan coast. But modern Italy 
has her hands full, and her treasury empty. She 
must wait years for the security which helps 



204 PORTOFERRAIO AND ELBA 

nations to develop ; but one of her first tasks 
in the better days that we all hope are in store 
for her, will be to make of Elba a second La 
Maddalena. 

From Portoferraio endless and delightful ex- 
cursions may be made. It is wise, and it certainly 
is pleasant too^ to use boats as much as possible. 
The roads, though excellent, are few and tor- 
tuous, carriage-hire is dear, and hired horseflesh 
inferior. Most enjoyable is the sail along the 
northern coast to Marciana Marina. There is a 
good inn here where you can sleep in cleanliness 
and comfort : best bedroom, one franc ; second 
best, fifty centimes ; or, if the fancy take you, a 
room may be shared with commercial travellers 
at thirty centesimi a bed. Here, too, as else- 
where, you may be sure of a wholesome meal 
(grilled beefsteaks), and the same pure yellow 
wine of the island that you get everywhere, rich 
in iron and tonic properties. 

From Marciana there are some beautiful and 
interesting mountain excursions — to Poggio, for 
example, or to Marciana Alta. Do not go in 
company of a botanist, or you will take all day 
in reaching your destination. Never have I seen, 
in the same narrow corner of the earth, so won- 
derful, so varied an array of wild flowers. I was 
(unfortunately) in the company of a botanist who 
lost his head as only the scientific can, mumbled 
the names of flowers of which I had never heard, 



MOUNTAIN EXCURSIONS 205 

of scrubby weeds that used to grow but will no 
longer grow in England, and of ferns that had no 
right to grow in the altitude we found them. 
The cactus hedges and hedgerows of prickly- 
pears in Elba are a sight which even the most 
unbotanical mind is constrained to admire, and 
the richly embroidered carpets of poppies, borage, 
scabious, dog-daisies, marigolds, vetches — richer 
and more deeply coloured than the English 
variety, red, blue, violet, yellow, mauve — afford 
a picture which the common observer will enjoy 
even more than the greedy herbalist. 

From Marciana, by way of Poggio, you may 
reach the highest point of Elba, Monte Capanne, 
3343 feet above the sea-level — no mean altitude 
for so small an island, and a sufficiently stiff 
climb. From the summit on a carefully chosen 
day you may see what the birds' eyes view — 
the whole island girt by the deep blue sea, in 
the north the islands of Gorgona and Capraia, 
in the south the island of Pianosa and the rock of 
Monte Cristo known to readers of Dumas. Seek 
out a guide at Poggio. It is a pleasant variation 
to descend on the other side of the Capanne to 
Campo, and thence you can drive to your natural 
headquarters, the Albergo delle Api at Porto- 
ferraio. 

But there is perhaps, after all, one "sight" in 
Elba. It has been celebrated by Aristotle and 
Virgil ("Insula inexhaustis Chalybum generosa 



206 PORTOFERRAIO AND ELBA 

metallis" ALn., Lib. x.), and everybody goes to 
see it : the rich, splendid iron-ore mines of Rio- 
marina, chief prop and backbone of Elban indus- 
trial life. To drive to Riomarina by the winding 
road through Porto Logone and Rio d'Elba is 
a lengthy matter (fully three hours) and costly 
beyond reason. It is quicker, more economic 
far, and far more pleasant, to take a sailing-boat 
across the bay to the little agglomeration of 
houses known as I Magazzini. There, if an 
hour and a half's walk along a roughish mule 
path — the moiety of it a gradual ascent — should 
prove too much, a horse can be had all the way 
to Rio for two livres, or you can take the horse 
half-way to where the descent begins for one 
livre. It is a beautiful walk, but here again it 
is as well to leave the botanist behind at the inn, 
or send him round by carriage. There is the 
same wealthy profusion of wild flowers, and there 
are shrubs and roots on inaccessible crags which 
he will risk his neck and disturb your peace of 
mind to get hold of. Midway you pass the 
towering summit of the Volterraio, crowned with 
the fine ruins of its keep and castle. Elba, 
perhaps, more than any other civilised spot in 
the Mediterranean, was troubled in mediaeval 
times with the ravages of the Barbary pirates. 
When all else failed, and the inroad of them 
could no longer be stemmed, the islanders took 
refuge in the Castle of the Volterraio, and there 



IRON ORE MINES 207 

is no record of their ever having been dislodged 
from that impregnable stronghold. Even Bar- 
barossa failed in the attempt. 

The iron-ore mines are Government property ; 
indeed the general land laws of Italy differ in a 
most important respect in Elba. On the conti- 
nent the landlord is proprietor of soU and subsoil, 
on the island of the soil only : for the Government 
reserve to themselves the right of appropriating 
all further discoveries of iron ore. This law sur- 
vives from feudal times, when the Princes of 
Piombino were owners of the mines, and it was 
continued by the Grand Dukes of Tuscany when 
they acquired the whole of the island in 18 15. 
The Elbani — who are, strangely enough, regard 
being had to their isolated position and simple 
habits, the most intensely " modern " of the 
Italians 1 — are keenly alive to this difference to 
their detriment in the law. 

The Government lease the mines at a hand- 
some royalty to the highest bidder. Hitherto 
the lease had been of the shortest — seven, five, 
or even three years. But in 1897 a new depar- 
ture was decided upon, and the mines were 
offered for a period of twenty years, with the 
right to extend to twenty-five years. After an 

1 I chanced to go over to Elba a few weeks after poor Caval- 
lotti had been killed in his duel. There was already a Via Caval- 
lotti, not in the capital, but in the remote commune of Marciana 
Marina. 



208 PORTOFERRAIO AND ELBA 

exciting bid the lease was acquired by a lucky- 
young islander, the Cavaliere Ubaldo Tonietti, 
at the high royalty of seven and a quarter francs 
a ton on all ore exported, and fifty centimes a ton 
on the ore used in Italy. Blast-furnaces exist at 
Fallonica on the mainland ; others are to be set 
up in Elba itself; and with the ever-increasing 
industrial activity of Italy, there is the possibility 
that a great many tons may be disposed of on 
which only the trifling royalty of fifty centimes 
need be paid to the Government. The lessee is 
limited by the terms of his contract to an annual 
output of 250,000 tons, and if this were all ex- 
ported abroad, it will be seen that the Italian 
Government would net for itself the handsome 
sum of 1,787,500 livres in royalties. In July 
1899 Signor Tonietti parted with his lease to a 
large company. The deposits of the ore are 
superficial, and can be worked with great economy 
and despatch. Some experts have stated that the 
mines will become exhausted in about thirty years' 
time. 

By far the greater part of the ore is consumed 
in English blast-furnaces, where it is highly 
prized, and by far the greater part of it leaves 
the island in British bottoms. In 1897 some 
sixty British vessels loaded ore at Rio, as opposed 
to sixteen foreign vessels. There is no port at 
Rio ; the steamers are loaded from lighters in 
the roadstead, but the operation is carried out 



PORTO LONGONE 209 

with surprising celerity. With the increased con- 
sumption of ore in Italian furnaces, there is likely 
to be little enough left, in the future, for English 
requirements. 

To me one of the most attractive (simpatico) 
spots in the island is Porto Longone, on the east 
coast. This was for two centuries a Spanish 
possession, and it still bears a distinctly Spanish 
impress. 1 Spanish and Italian blood mix well, 
and produce a fine race. And so the inhabitants 
of Porto Longone seem to convey an immediate 
impression of all good qualities — courtesy, cheer- 
fulness, intelligence, and even physique. Hard 
by the picturesque Spanish fort is a terrible 
Ergastolo, or prison, where murderers, con- 
demned to absolutely solitary confinement (for 
capital punishment does not exist in Italy), drag 
out their miserable existence, and often enough 
succumb to the dread and hopeless severity of 
the system. The natural harbour of Longone is 
one of the finest and safest in Italy. 

A word on the history of Elba. I do not 
propose with a modern writer to go back to the 
Stone Age and the Etruscans, to Aristotle and 
Diodorus Siculus. It is sufficient to say that at 
the beginning of the eleventh century the island 
was a possession of the Republic of Pisa, that at 
the close of the thirteenth century it passed by 

1 See the chapter, " Some Tuscan Strongholds : the Spanish 
Praesidia." 



210 PORTOFERRAIO AND ELBA 

force of arms to the sister Republic of Genoa, 
and once more back again to the Pisans. In 
1392 it became by treachery the possession of 
Jacopo Appiani, Secretary to the unhappy Pietro 
Gambacorti, Lord of Pisa, and it remained un- 
divided in the Appiani family until 1545, having, 
however, been made a fief of the Holy Roman 
Empire in 1509. In 1545 the Emperor Charles 
V. gave Portoferraio and some three miles of 
the territory beyond it to Cosimo I., Grand 
Duke of Tuscany ; in 1603 Philip III. of Spain 
acquired Porto Longone and the castellated hill- 
tops around, which passed in 1759 to the Bour- 
bon Kings of Naples ; the remaining and far 
greater part of the island, including the rich 
iron-ore mines, continued, as a fief, in the hands 
of the Appiani until, on their extinction, it was 
acquired by the Ludovisi, and subsequently, 
through marriage, by the Buoncompagni family. 
It will thus be seen that this small corner of 
much-divided Italy enjoyed the sway of three 
separate masters. 

Indeed it is a curious and interesting, if some- 
what intricate, problem to consider the position 
of Elba territorially and from the point of view 
of allegiance, at the end of last century, when the 
European war was at its height. Elba had three 
immediate masters, as I have said, but only one 
of them was absolute — the other two had feudal 
overlords. 



MASTERS OF ELBA 211 

1. Ferdinand III., Grand Duke of Tuscany, 
held Portoferraio as a fief from Francis II., the 
Emperor. 

2. Ferdinand IV., King of Naples, held Porto 
Longone as a possession of his House. 

3. Don Antonio Buoncompagni, Prince of 
Piombino, held the remainder of the island as 
a fief from Charles IV. of Spain, who in turn 
derived the fief from the Emperor. 

This then was the curiously complicated posi- 
tion of allegiance when the French came to Elba 
in 1799 : — 

1. The immediate master of Portoferraio was 
at peace with France, while his feudal sovereign, 
the Emperor, was at war. 

2. The master of Porto Longone, Ferdinand 
IV., was at war with France. 

3. The vassal Prince of Piombino was at peace 
with France, so was his immediate overlord, 
Charles of Spain, but Charles's feudal sovereign 
in turn was at war with France. It makes the 
head spin, and assuredly the territorial complica- 
tions of Italy in the past, and the necessity of 
understanding them, must have largely contri- 
buted to develop the sharp wits for which Italians 
are famous. 1 

1 Whoever has a mind to see for himself, in detail, the pretty 
imbroglio that resulted from this state of things, should consult 
an interesting work, a perfect marvel of an accumulation of 
minutiae, "I Francesi alPElba nel 1799," by the late Vincenzo 
Mellini Ponge de Leon, Livorno, Giusti, 1890, pp. vi-320. 



212 PORTOFERRAIO AND ELBA 

In 1 8 14 Elba was for the first time in its 
history to become an independent principality, 
united under one lord who lived upon its soil. 
The Treaty of Fontainebleau stripped Napoleon 
of all his ill-gotten possessions save this little 
island (for Elba, with Tuscany, formed part of 
the French Empire), which, in the words of the 
treaty, was to form "sa vie durant, une princi- 
paute separee qui sera possedee par lui en toute 
propriete et souverainete." I wonder why Eng- 
lish schoolboys always speak as if Napoleon were 
a prisoner in Elba in the same sense that he was 
in St. Helena : can it be that their text-books 
tell them so ? For Napoleon was nothing of the 
kind : he was the independent sovereign of a 
new State, theoretically free in his actions, and 
possessing his own army and navy, his court 
and ministers, his capital city and special coat- 
of-arms and flag. 

Napoleon 1 arrived at Portoferraio on the 3rd 
May 1 8 14 on board his Majesty's frigate Un- 
daunted, and landed the day following, being 
greeted from the forts with a salute of twenty- 



1 I know it is very incorrect to speak of Buonaparte by his 
Christian name, just as if he were in very deed a lawful sovereign 
with a full and undisputed right to rule in the place of those whom 
he dispossessed. But it is hopeless to attempt to change a 
universal bad habit now firmly rooted in history, and it is eloquent 
testimony to the real greatness of Napoleon that he has been able 
to force his Christian name on to the history of the world. Crom- 
well could never have got himself called Oliver. 



NAPOLEON IN ELBA 213 

one guns. On the voyage out he had devised 
a coat-of-arms and flag for his new kingdom : 
argent, on a bencl gules, three bees or. The 
flag was first hoisted on the Undaunted in Porto- 
ferraio harbour, and when afterwards floating on 
the citadel, was solemnly saluted by the English 
frigate. The Elbans welcomed Napoleon with 
transports of delight. It was natural enough, 
perhaps. Their island took a sudden dignity 
and importance in the eyes of all the world ; for 
sovereign they had got the greatest conqueror 
of the time, famous, too, for his administrative 
abilities. He was, moreover, reputed to be 
bringing a vast treasure with him. The people 
looked forward to a new era of plenty and pro- 
sperity. And they were not disappointed. 

The very next day after landing Napoleon was 
up at five in the morning, making a minute in- 
spection of his capital city, and from that moment 
he never relaxed his efforts to improve the con- 
dition of Elba. He made roads, planted trees, 
built houses and a theatre, and strengthened the 
fortifications. He developed trade and all local 
industries, and improved the system of working 
the mines at Rio. He formed an army of fifteen 
hundred men (eight hundred of them were of his 
"Old Guard"), and a navy of five ships, the 
largest of them a brig, in which he afterwards 
returned to France for the memorable Hundred 
Days. His budget was not much more than 



214 PORTOFERRAIO AND ELBA 

100,000 francs, and the vast treasure of which 
the Elbans gossiped was only about three mil- 
lion francs. Nothing is more interesting than 
to trace the daily life of this extraordinary man 
in his miniature Empire. He was constantly 
busied for the welfare of the State, and confesses 
to having been remarkably content and happy. 

Napoleon's reign in Elba lasted little over ten 
months. He started for France, quite openly, 
on the 26th February 181 5 with a flotilla often 
ships and nine hundred men, lord of the smallest 
kingdom, commander of the smallest army and 
navy, that ever undertook the conquest of the 
world, and lived to look back with regret from 
his island prison in the Atlantic to his island 
kingdom in the Tyrrhenian Sea. 1 

Visitors to Elba all go to see the little villa of 
San Martino, Napoleon's country house, situated 
about three miles from Portoferraio. It is a 
modest and insignificant structure, having but a 
dozen rooms, but it is splendidly placed in face 
of the great bay, and commands a fine view. 
Prince Anatole Demidoff, whose wife was a sister 
of Jerome Buonaparte, bought it in 185 1. In 
front of it he built a museum two hundred and 

1 Mons. Marcellin Pellet's "Napoleon a Hie d'Elbe" is a note- 
worthy and very instructive work which does not seem to have 
obtained all the attention in England that it deserves. Mons. 
Pellet was the first writer to make use of the archives of the 
French Consulate in Leghorn, which are rich in the reports of 
French spies upon the sayings and doings of the ruler of Elba. 



• 




Photograph by Piccinnint, Portoferraio 

The Villa San Martino and Demidoff Museum 

To face p. 214 



NAPOLEON'S HOUSE 215 

seven feet long, the roof of which forms a gar- 
den terrace to the villa, and herein he placed 
his wonderful collection of Napoleon relics and 
memorials. It was a genuine "sight," and drew 
crowds of travellers. The shell of the Museum 
still exists, but its contents, alas ! were sold and 
scattered by the Prince's heir. In the villa itself 
there is, I think, but a bed, a table, and a chair 
left of Napoleon's belongings. The whole pro- 
perty has now been acquired by Signor Ubaldo 
Tonietti, the late lessee of the mines, and he has 
put it in fine order. A permit to see the villa, 
costing one franc, must be obtained in the town 
before starting. 

In Portoferraio itself, Napoleon's town house, 
known as I Mulini — insignificant enough that 
also — still exists, and is now occupied by the 
Genio Militare. It is situated at the top of the 
town between the forts La Stella and II Falcone, 
and overlooks the open sea to the north. From 
the garden there is a path descending to a little 
cove where Napoleon used to bathe. In the 
Church of the Misericordia is a mask of Napo- 
leon, said to be one of the only two copies in 
existence, the other being at Les Invalides. Every 
5th May, the anniversary of Napoleon's death, a 
mass, attended by the civil and military authori- 
ties, is said for the repose of the soul of the former 
sovereign of the island, and five hundred francs' 
worth of bread is distributed to the poor. Prince 



216 PORTOFERRAIO AND ELBA 

Anatole Demidoff is the founder of both the mass 
and the charity. 

The persistency and potency of the Napoleonic 
legend in the island is illustrated by a curious 
and, I think, little known fact of recent history. 
After the disaster of Sedan the Elbans heard 
the rumour that Napoleon III. on his release 
would choose their island as his future residence. 
On the i st November 1870 an address to the 
fallen Emperor, signed by fifty- five notables of 
the island, was drawn up, offering him hospitality 
and a warm and loyal welcome. The address 
was sent by the Mayor of Portoferraio to Count 
Brassier de Saint-Simon, Envoy at Florence of 
the Germanic Confederation, praying that his 
Excellency would be pleased to charge himself 
with its safe delivery to the Emperor, then at 
Wilhelmshohe. Count Brassier seems to have 
been unable or unwilling to undertake the task, 
and to have been a very long while in coming to a 
decision, for it was not until the 1st March 1871 
that the Mayor of Portoferraio finally transmitted 
the address direct to the Emperor himself. It 
runs as follows : — 

"Portoferraio, i novembre, 1870. 

" Sire, — Les habitants de la ville de Porto- 
ferraio ont ete vivement emus a. la nouvelle que 
votre Majeste pour retablir sa sante avait choisi 
le sejour de l'lle d'Elbe. 



NAPOLEON AND THE MAYOR 217 

" Les souvenirs de 18 14 et 18 15, qui ne se sont 
jamais effaces, ont fait battre avec violence le 
cceur de ceux entre nous qui ont eu le bonheur 
de connaitre et d'admirer de pres le glorieux 
fondateur de votre dynastie, comme de ceux qui, 
ayant vu le jour plus tard, ont connu le grand 
homme par les traces bienfaisantes qu'il a laiss^es 
chez nous. 

" Le successeur de Napoleon I er , celui qu'un 
immense malheur vient de frapper, ne peut etre 
rec.u dans notre ville qu'avec la plus grande 
reconnaissance. Venez, Sire, nous serons fiers 
d'accorder l'hospitalite et d'entourer de nos soins 
le parent de notre Souverain, l'homme a qui 
notre Italie bien aimee doit en grande partie son 
affranchissement. 

" Nous avons l'honneur d'etre, Sire, de votre 
Majeste les tres humbles et tres obeissants ser- 
viteurs." 

(Fifty-five Signatures.) 

And this was Napoleon's graceful reply : — 

" Wilhelmshohe, io mars, 1871. 

" Monsieur le Syndic, — J'ai re9u 1'adresse 
par laquelle les habitants de Portoferraio m'of- 
frent l'hospitalite dans leur ville, pensant que 
j'avais choisi l'lle d'Elbe pour y fixer ma resid- 
ence. Quoique cette nouvelle n'ait jamais eu 
aucun fondement je suis heureux du temoignage 



218 PORTOFERRAIO AND ELBA 

de sympathie quelle a provoque et dont j'ai et6 
vivement touche. 

" Veuillez, Monsieur le Syndic, vous faire 
aupres de vos concitoyens l'interprete de mes 
remerciments et croire a. mes sentiments de- 
voues. Napoleon." 

This little incident, as far as I am aware, has 
never been mentioned in any Life of Napoleon 
III., and is certainly worthy of being put on 
record. 

Much might be written of the island of Elba, 
of its historic memories, its natural beauties, its 
busy industries, its peaceful and charming inhabi- 
tants, did but tyrant space permit. Better far, 
though, than reading about Elba is to go and 
see for oneself. Why so few travellers visit the 
island is a constant puzzle to the few who know 
it ; but in an age of travel, the time cannot be far 
distant when Elba will get her full measure of 
the appreciation due to so delightful and unique 
a corner of the civilised world. 






A TUSCAN SANCTUARY: 

MOUNT LA VERNA 



A TUSCAN SANCTUARY : MOUNT 
LA VERNA 

Salve Mons felix, Sinai felicior illo 
Scripsit ubi Moysi jura sacrata Deus, 
Te super apparens Crucifixus luce refulsit, 
Francisco oranti Stigmata sacra dedit. 

Mons coagulatus, Mons pinguis . . . Mons in quo benepla- 
citum est Deo habitare in eo : etenim Dominus habitabit in 
finem. — Psalm lxvii. 

Early in the morning of the 14th September 
1224, on the Feast of the Exaltation of Holy 
Cross, ere day had yet dawned, Francis Bernar- 
done, at that time the foremost Standard-bearer 
of Christ in all Christendom, received the marks 
of his Lord's Passion while keeping the Lent of 
St. Michael Archangel on the solitary rugged 
heights of Mount La Verna in Tuscany. The 
wild mountain has ever since been one of the 
chief objects of interest in the Kingdom of God 
upon earth, but fewer of the faithful go there 
than might be supposed. 

For the way to Mount La Verna, like the 
narrow way, is beset with difficulties. To get there 
you must make as if you were going to Camal- 
doli, the home of St. Romuald's children. (See 



222 MOUNT LA VERNA 

next Chapter.) Descend at Bibbiena station. Do 
not fear to arrive in the evening ; you may sleep 
there in cleanliness and comfort, and eat of the 
wholesomest and best, if you take shelter in the 
little hostelry called the Albergo Amorosi. From 
Bibbiena a carriage, after three hours' toilsome 
climb up the roughest of roads, will bring you 
within measurable distance of the Franciscan 
convent at the summit. The last twenty minutes 
of the climb must be done on foot, so steep, so 
rough, so narrow, has the path become. 

Arrived at the Convent doors, you will receive 
that hearty, cheery welcome peculiar to all 
Religious, whether Friars, or Monks, or Clerks 
Regular. If you are of the male sex, a bed 
and possibly a separate bedroom will be pre- 
pared for you in the guest-quarter of the Con- 
vent ; if of the gentler sex, you must sleep below, 
where, at the point that your horses could go no 
further, stands a great barn-like building, kept 
for the purpose by two ancient dames of the 
Third Order of St. Francis. But both men and 
women may take their meals together in the 
guest-quarter up at the Convent. The food is 
homely, but seasoned with a piquant and appe- 
tising sauce — the cheery chat, the gentle humour, 
the exquisite courtesy of the humble Religious 
who wait upon you at table. They fall so 
naturally and tactfully into the menial office, 
they make you so thoroughly at home ; yet I 



A HERALDIC MONSTER 223 

protest that it would be much more fit and 
natural that we, selfish and self-indulgent crea- 
tures of the world, should be at their feet, 
begging as a privilege to wipe the dust off 
their sandals. No charge is made by the 
Fathers for their hospitality, but every guest 
makes an offering according to his means, or, 
better still, according to his affections, which 
after the briefest stay here will surely far outrun 
his means. 

La Verna (4160 feet) is a wonderful mountain 
to behold. Bare and barren at first, and rising 
very gradually, it suddenly shoots up skywards in 
great perpendicular walls of rock. ''The Ark of 
Noah petrified on Mount Ararat," is M. Sabatier's 
graphic description. To my imagination, as seen 
from the west, it seemed like some heraldic mon- 
ster of the cockatrice order, and mentally I 
blazoned it against the heavens azure : combed 
vert and wattled tenne. The crest is covered 
with pines and huge beech-trees ; all round the 
Convent, as if fallen from the skies, immense 
boulders of rock, piled one on the top of the 
other, show deep fissures, wide chasms, and 
dark caverns : a wilder spot it would be impos- 
sible to imagine. It was revealed to St. Francis 
that the rocks were thus upheaved at the hour of 
the Crucifixion, when the earth did quake and 
the rocks were rent ; and even the flippant fin- 
de-siecle sceptic forgets to show astonishment or 



224 MOUNT LA VERNA 

express contempt at the statement, so marvellous, 
so unique, are Nature's freaks on Mount La 
Verna, so rarefied, so penetrating, is the atmos- 
phere of the supernatural that hangs about it. 

A shred or two of history before I speak 
further of personal impressions. It was in the 
year of our Lord 12 13, Francis then being 
thirty-one years of age and his Order four years 
in existence, that Orlando Cattani, Count of 
Chiusi, a pious and wealthy noble, made the 
Saint a free gift of Mount La Verna. " My 
father," he said, " I possess a mountain in Tus- 
cany that is very lonely and most suited to 
contemplation ; if so be that you are pleased to 
dwell there, I will most willingly make you a 
free gift of it for the love of God, and I will 
see, too, that you are furnished with all things 
necessary for the life of the body." 

Francis gratefully accepted the precious offer- 
ing, and sent two of his Religious to take 
possession of the mountain. Fifty armed men 
accompanied them, so greatly was that country- 
side infested with robbers and wild beasts. The 
two Religious, with the help of the men-at-arms, 
cut down the boughs of trees, and, adding a 
plaster of mud, built with them a rude habita- 
tion, divided into a few separate cells. This 
was the original of the famous Convent of La 
Verna ! 

It was not until August in 1215 that Francis 



ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI 225 

paid his first visit to the holy mount, setting out 
from Santa Maria degli Angeli at Assisi. We 
may not linger with him on that memorable 
journey, which has been described for all time 
in the " Fioretti." It was near his journey's 
end, at a spot now marked by a little chapel 
called the Cappella degli Uccelli, while sitting 
down to rest ere making the last brief steep 
ascent, that a crowd of birds of all kinds, whirl- 
ing in the air with every demonstration of delight, 
finally settled, some on his shoulders, some on 
his arms, some in his lap, and some at his feet. 
The dear Saint lifted a happy face to the Brothers 
who were with him and said : " Dear Brothers, it 
cannot but be that the Lord Jesus is pleased that 
we should dwell in this lonely mountain, for see 
what joy our brothers and sisters, the birds, show 
at our coming." 

St. Francis visited La Verna six times alto- 
gether. We can only follow him on his last 
visit thither. This was in 1224, two years before 
his death, when he repaired to La Verna to keep 
the Lent of St. Michael, which commenced on 
the 16th August and ended on the 28th Sep- 
tember. Being now more than ever joined in 
familiar intercourse with his Master, Francis 
desired to observe this Lent with more than 
customary strictness. He caused a little cell to 
be built for himself in a solitary spot of the 
mountain, only accessible by a plank bridge. 

p 



226 MOUNT LA VERNA 

And then he laid upon his brethren the com- 
mand that they should leave him entirely alone. 
"Only thou, Frate Leone," 1 he said, "thou, if 
I shall not have come at midday to share the 
usual meal with the rest, thou mayest come and 
bring me a little bread and water ; and again 
thou mayest come at midnight, at the hour of 
Matins, but, before entering thou shalt say : O 
Lord, open Thou my lips ; and if I answer, then 
pass over and we will say Matins together ; but 
if I answer not, then depart without further 
speech." 

But besides Frate Leone, another privileged 
friend, Frate Falcone, was admitted to some 
intimacy with Francis during this long fast. 
Brother Falcon had his home in the rock above 
the cell, and nightly, with unfailing fidelity, 
awoke the Saint with his cries about the hour 
of Matins, so that he might in nowise fail 
to rise and say the Divine Office. Only 
Divine Providence had infused into Brother 
Falcon the bowels of human compassion, for, 
when he saw that his brother Francis was more 
than usually wearied with fasting and watching, 
he let him sleep in peace until the dawn. Thus 
did the birds of the air (what no human being 

1 Fra Leone was his confessor and secretary. By reason of his 
gentleness and simplicity, the Saint used to call him Fra Pecorella 
di Dio. He was certainly the St. John of this company of Apostles 
— the favourite disciple, who was allowed to recline on his master's 
breast in the fulness of a tender intimacy. 



LEGEND OF ST. FRANCIS 227 

ever could) temper a little the austerity of the 
penance which Brother Francis had set himself. 
Brother Falcon still,' to-day, builds in the same 
rock, and though rude and inconsiderate hands 
have robbed him of his young, though he departs 
at times to launch his offspring in the great world, 
yet ever does he return to build in the rock that 
is hallowed by the memory of his pious ancestor, 
the Blessed Falcon. 

Early on the morning of the 14th September, 
on the Feast of the Exaltation of Holy Cross, ere 
day had yet dawned, certain shepherds in the 
plain below saw the holy hill irradiated with a 
light as of the risen sun. And certain muleteers, 
believing that the sun had indeed risen, started 
on their journey to the Romagna, only to be 
overtaken by darkness when that supernatural 
light had failed. For the light came from 
heaven, and it shone upon Francis rapt in the 
love of God. And as he looked, he beheld a 
Seraph with six wings descending swiftly to- 
wards him ; two of the wings hid the Angel's 
face, two others covered his body, while with 
the other two he winged his rapid flight to earth. 
And as the Seraph drew nigh, the Saint looked 
and saw that he was nailed upon a Cross like 
the Lord Himself. In that heavenly visitation, 
Francis was sealed with the Five Wounds of the 
Passion. 

The case of St. Francis of Assisi is the first 



228 MOUNT LA VERNA 

recorded case of Stigmata in hagiography, and it 
remains to this day the best authenticated and 
the most marvellous. The most marvellous, and 
in this unique, that through the wounds in the 
poor hands and feet there projected long nails of 
a black, hard, fleshy substance. The round heads 
of the nails showed close against the palms, and 
from out the back of the hands came the points 
of the nails, bent back, as if they had pierced 
through wood and then been clinched. And 
so with the feet : the nails had pierced them 
through, so that it was agony to the poor Saint 
to put his feet on the ground. The open wound 
in the side had the appearance of having been 
inflicted by a lance-head. There is no reason 
to doubt the substantial accuracy of this account 
of the nature of St. Francis' Stigmata. That 
he actually received the Stigmata is, of course, 
beyond all doubt, and no serious person any 
longer seeks to dispute the fact. M. Paul 
Sabatier, born a Huguenot and since lapsed 
into Renanism, while denying the possibility of 
all miracle, admits the essential fact to the full. 
"II reste," he says, "a examiner les stigmates 
au point de vue purement historique. Or, si sur 
ce terrain les difficultes petites et grandes ne 
manquent pas, les temoignages m'ont paru a la 
fois trop nombreux et trop precis pour ne pas 
entratner la conviction." ("Vie de St. Frangois 
d' Assise," 22me edition, p. 402. Paris, 1899.) 



A FAREWELL 229 

The day after the Feast of St. Michael, Fran- 
cis left La Verna forever. He could no longer 
walk, on account of the great pain of his wounds, 
but rode upon an ass which Count Orlando had 
sent up for his use. Before starting, he besought 
the children around him, and the children that 
were to come after him, to have a special care of 
the holy mount where God had wrought such 
wonders. "I desire," he said, "that this place 
shall ever be inhabited by God-fearing Religious, 
the flower of my Order. I command you under 
holy obedience to live in charity, to be instant 
in prayer, to have a diligent care of this place, 
singing the Divine Praises day and night. And 
suffer no man to profane this holy hill. I give 
my blessing to all who shall respect and reverence 
it. Ah ! — Ah ! — Ah ! — Fra Masseo, I can say no 
more." 

Fra Masseo, in a letter addressed to his 
brethren, has left a vivid record of the Saint's 
pathetic farewell to Mount La Verna. It runs 
something like this, but that so much of the 
savour has gone out of it in the English tongue : 

" Addio ! Addio ! Addio ! Fra Masseo ! 
Addio ! Addio ! Addio ! Frate Angelo ! " 

(And the like he said also to Fra Silvestro and 
to Frate Illuminate) " Rest in peace, my dearest 
children. May God bless you. My dearest 
children, farewell! I am leaving you in the 



230 MOUNT LA VERNA 

body, but I leave my heart behind with you. 
I am going away with Fra Pecorella di Dio ; 
I am going to Santa Maria degli Angeli, and I 
shall return hither no more. I am going : 
farewell, farewell, farewell, to all ! Farewell, O 
Mountain ! Farewell, farewell, Mount La Verna ! 
Farewell, Mount of Angels ! Farewell, my best 
beloved ; O best beloved, farewell ! Brother 
Falcon, I thank thee for the charity thou didst 
use me. Addio, Sasso Spicco ! Farewell, great 
rock! Farewell, farewell, farewell, O rock that 
didst receive me into thy bowels, confounding the 
wiles of the evil one. Alas ! we may meet no 
more. Farewell, Santa Maria degli Angeli ! l 
O Mother of the Eternal Word, I commend to 
thee these my dear sons ! " 

" And while our dear father was speaking thus," 
continues poor Masseo, "our eyes were shedding 
fountains of tears, and he departed, weeping like- 
wise, taking with him our hearts, and leaving us 
orphans indeed, for the loss of such a father. 
I, Frate Masseo, have writ all this. And may 
God bless us ! " 

Before finally losing sight of La Verna, Francis 
turned and once more blessed the holy hill in 
these words : " Farewell, thou mountain of God, 
thou Holy Mount, Mons coagulatus, Mons pinguis, 

1 The little church on Mount La Verna, not to be confounded 
with the more famous Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli at 
Assisi. 



FRA LEONE 231 

Mons in quo beneplacitum est Deo habitare} 
Farewell, Mount la Verna ! May God the 
Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost 
bless thee ! Rest in peace, for we shall never 
meet again ! " 

Such then is the great fact, luminous and indis- 
putable, which has made Mount la Verna famous 
in Christendom. Let us briefly glance at one 
interesting proof of it which has put the whole 
matter outside the range of doubt for sane and 
scientific historians, — imprimis for M. Sabatier. 
It fell out one day that Fra Leone was grievously 
afflicted with a spiritual temptation, and ardently 
desired, as the only remedy, to have some memo- 
rable passage of Holy Scripture written out by the 
hand of the Saint and briefly annotated by him. 
But he dared not ask it. St. Francis, however, 
divined his wish, and wrote on parchment with 
his own hand, signing it with his sign manual of a 
Cross Tau, the following memorable passage of 
Holy Writ, which is nothing less than the words 
in which Almighty God commanded that Aaron 
and his sons should bless the children of Israel : 

Benedicat tibi Dominus et custodiat te : 
Ostendat faciem suam tibi et misereatur tui : 
Convertat vultum suum ad te et det tibi pacem. 2 



1 The Saint, who has been speaking in Italian, here breaks into 
Latin of the Liturgy. " Ces paroles," says M. Sabatier, who 
defends the authenticity of Fra Masseo's letter, " ont du veritable- 
ment £tre prononcees par lui." 

2 Numbers vi. 24-26. 



232 MOUNT LA VERNA 

Then follows the Saint's annotation, and surely 
since Moses wrote there has never been so elo- 
quent, so touching a commentary on the Scriptures: 
Dominus benedicat te, Frater Leo — and may the 
Lord bless thee, Brother Leo. 

The original of this Blessing is preserved in 
the Sacristy of the Sagro Convento at Assisi. 
Precious as it is in itself, it has been made 
yet more precious by the statements which Fra 
Leone has written on the face of it in his own 
well-known handwriting. He has authenticated 
the Blessing itself, he has authenticated the Cross 
Tau, and above the Blessing he has written the 
following priceless witness to the truth of the 
Stigmata : 

" The Blessed Francis, two years before his 
" death, kept a Lent at La Verna in honour of 
" the Blessed Virgin Mother of God, and of the 
" Blessed Michael Archangel, from the Feast of 
" the Assumption of the Holy Virgin Mary to 
"the Feast of St. Michael in September, and 
" the hand of the Lord touched him by the 
" vision and converse of a Seraph, and by the 
" impression of the Wounds of Christ in his own 
"body, &c" 

The writer's fortunate discovery of the signifi- 
cance of the hieroglyphic out of which the Cross 
Tau rises, proves that St. Francis has himself, in 
pen and ink, witnessed to the fact that he did 
receive the Stigmata, and constitutes proof final 














****!*« 'ffl&ii. ^ 



! e»#- b / C «F' \^'i®%*' : 



Cone* t:u un 




■ *M 



Facsimile of the Benediction of St. Francis 

Photograph from the original by Peke Edouard d'Alencon 



To face p. 232 



IL QUADRANTE 233 

and irrefragable of this interesting historical 
event. 1 

And now let us glance, brief as the glance must 
be, at the wonders which, if you will take scrip and 
staff and ascend thither, you still may see with your 
own eyes on the Mountain of La Verna at the end 
of this unbelieving century : 

1. Of the Cappella degli Uccelli and what took 
place there, I have already spoken. 

2. By a low gateway we enter the large court- 
yard of the Convent called il Quadrante. And in 
spirit we take the shoes from off our feet, for we 
are on very holy ground. The Convent itself is 
a large, low, irregular pile of buildings, rough, bare, 
and exceedingly severe. The present edifices 
date from about 1472. Very impressive is the 
dark quadrilateral corridor ; cells, whose walls do 
not reach the roof, run round every side of it, and 
the great worm-eaten rafters above are dimly 
visible in the darkness. When midnight comes, 
one of the gentle Brothers, transformed, surely, for 
the nonce, into a fiend in friarly shape, walks 
round the extent of the great dormitory, wielding 
a cruel pair of clappers, whose inhuman din makes 
all the rafters ring as if the foul fiend were upon 
us. I was in the corridor at the time, and stopped 

1 I have fully explained the discovery in an Italian pamphlet, 
" La Benedizione di San Francesco : Spiegazione del Gerogli- 
fico," Livorno, Giusti, 1900, p. 16, and also in St. Peters Magazine 
for February 1900, "A New Light on the Benediction of St. 
Francis." 



234 MOUNT LA VERNA 

my ears, but my eyes, by the light of a friend's 
lantern, saw the doors open and cheerful figures 
flit along to midnight Matins in the Church. A 
cheerfulness born of grace surely, for an old Friar 
confessed to me that all habits may be formed, 
but never in a long lifetime the habit of rising 
willingly at midnight. Usually, between Fathers 
and Novices and Lay Brothers, there are 
quite a hundred Friars at La Verna. Here, more 
than in any other place that I know of in old 
Tuscany, you may see what flourishing religious 
life was like, before a cruel and inconsiderate 
secular hand sought to stifle it. The Friars of La 
Verna have enjoyed a better fortune than many 
other Religious. When they were about to be 
dispossessed in the ill-advised wholesale suppres- 
sion of 1866, the Municipality of Florence made 
good a claim to the property as against the 
Government. And though the Municipality, as 
present landlords, make the Friars pay rent for 
living in their own house, still, on the whole, they 
are left in peace to praise God, to the great content- 
ment of the poor and of the tourist climber in 
search of refreshment. 

3. Then there is the Cappella della Maddalena, 
which, it is thought, marks the spot of the original 
Tugurio or Convent of wattles and daub. Here 
the Master appeared to Francis, and seated on a 
rude stone which served the community as table, 
made four promises regarding his Order which 



CHURCHES OF LA VERNA 235 

have become famous in Catholic Christendom. 
Frate Leone coming in later to lay the table for 
dinner, the Saint stopped him, saying : " Brother 
Leo, wash this stone, first with water, then with 
wine, then with oil, then with milk, and then with 
balsam, for I tell thee the Lord Jesus has sat upon 
it." This stone is now used as the altar-stone of 
the Chapel, and the clergy account it a great 
privilege to say Mass upon it, for Francis called it 
also "the Altar of God." It was on this spot, 
too, that St. Francis wrote the Blessing for Fra 
Leone. 

4. The little Church of Santa Maria degli 
Angeli, or Chiesina, was the original Church of 
La Verna, begun in 12 16 by St. Francis, after 
designs, says tradition, furnished by the Blessed 
Virgin herself. It was afterwards enlarged by 
St. Bonaventure. Even now it is but 29 feet 
long by ij wide. 'Tis a spot very sacred to 
the Friars, but the increase in their numbers and 
the great concourse of the Faithful obliged them 
to build 

5. The spacious Church of St. Mary, begun 
in 1348. It is 131 feet long and ^ wide, 
handsome in its proportions, and devout in the 
extreme. It is, moreover, rich in della Rob- 
bias, and contains, perhaps, the two most perfect 
specimens in all the world (the undoubted work 
of Luca himself) — an Annunciation in the Nic- 
colini Chapel on the left, and a Nativity in the 



236 MOUNT LA VERNA 

Brizzi Chapel on the right. Three colours only- 
are used in these exquisite works — white, blue, 
and green ; not even in the borders is there any- 
yellow. 

6. Just outside the entrance to the Church is 
the covered loggia, which leads to the Chapel of 
the Stigmata. For you must know that twice a 
day, the first time after Vespers, and the second 
after midnight Matins, the Friars go in procession 
from the Church to this Chapel, which now covers 
the spot where the great miracle took place. The 
loggia is 250 feet in length ; on one side of it is 
a Via Cruets in bas-relief, on the other frescoes 
representing scenes from the life of the Saint. 
It was built in 1582. Before this, the Friars had 
made their procession in the open, even in the 
terrible storms and bitter cold of winter time. 
There is a tradition — one of those characteristic 
traditions of the Catholic Church which, if lacking 
in scientific precision, have yet never harmed a 
living soul 1 — a tradition that, on the night of a 
fearful snowstorm, the Community turned faint- 

1 "Toute religion," says Joseph de Maistre, "par la nature 
meme des choses, pousse une mythologie qui lui ressemble. Celle 
de la religion chre"tienne est, par cette raison,toujours chaste, toujours 
utile, et souvent sublime, sans que (par un privilege particulier) il 
soit jamais possible de la confondre avec la religion meme. De 
maniere que nulle mythe chretien ne peut nuire, et que souvent il 
me"rite toute l'attention de 1'observateur." Principe Ge'ne'rateur des 
Constitutions Politiques, XXX. (note). And I will be so bold as 
to maintain that all the " myths " mentioned in the course of my 
book are well worthy the best attention of the observer. 




Photograph by Ai.inaki, Florence 

The Annunciation, by Luca dki.i.a Robbia 

To /ace />. 236 



CHAPEL OF THE STIGMATA 237 

hearted and remained indoors. Next day the 
path to the Chapel was deeply marked in the 
snow with the footprints of all manner of birds 
and beasts who had gone in procession to do 
duty for the Friars. After this reproof from 
dumb animals, the Community was never known 
to fail again, however bitter the cold, however 
deep the snow. 

7. The loggia leads, as I have said, to the 
Chapel of the Stigmata. Behind the High Altar 
of it is a della Robbia Crucifixion with life-size 
figures. It is the favourite with many people in 
this museum of della Robbia. On the top of the 
Cross, in a green nest — how touching the idea, 
how fitting the place — is a pelican in her piety. 
The spot where St. Francis knelt when the 
Seraph flew down to him is in front of the High 
Altar, and covered with an iron grating. 

I can do little more than just mention by 
name : 

8. The Cappella della Croce, adjoining the 
Chapel of the Stigmata, and marking the spot 
where stood the cell in which St. Francis kept 
the Lent of St. Michael in 1224. 

9. The Oratory of St. Anthony of Padua, 
where the great preacher compiled his " Ser- 
monario." 

10. The Oratory of St. Bonaventure, where the 
Seraphic Doctor wrote his " Itinerarium Mentis 
in Deum." 



238 MOUNT LA VERNA 

Do not fail to see — 

1 1. The Sasso Spicco, most characteristic of all 
the great rocks of La Verna. It hangs to the 
mountain-side seemingly by a mere thread of 
itself, and yet is a great solid mass, 43 feet wide 
and 13 feet deep. As you walk underneath the 
huge monster, it seems as if it must surely slide 




THE SASSO SPICCO, LA VERNA 

down and grind you to powder. Under its 
shelter St. Francis used often to pass hours in 
prayer and meditation. 

12. The Bed, or Letto, of St. Francis, a dark 
cavernous nook, situated in the very bowels of 
the rocks, where the Saint delighted to rest and 
pray. 



IL LETTO DI SAN FRANCESCO 239 

13. Then there is the spot in the sheer preci- 
pice, now accessible by a practicable way, where 
the solid rock turned' to soft wax, receiving into it 
the Saint's body when Satan attempted to throw 
him over the cliff. It is to this rock that St. 




IL LETTO DI SAN FRANCESCO, LA VERNA 

Francis so tenderly addresses his thanks in the 
" Addio " to La Verna which has already been 
quoted. 

14. Leaving the Convent to walk up to La 
Penna, the highest point of the mountain, you will 



240 MOUNT LA VERNA 

pass the cell of the Blessed Giovanni della Verna, 
a very holy Religious who died in 1322. The 
Lord used to come and walk familiarly with him 
there, as he walked with Enoch of old, and on that 
spot touched by the Divine feet the grass has 
ever since refused to grow. In fact, in front of 
Giovanni's cell there is a bare space some 50 
feet long by 20 wide, now walled-in, and the 
grass is rich and green all round the outside of 
the walls, but there is not so much as a tuft 
within. 

15. Proceeding, you will come to the Sasso di 
Lupo (Rock of the Wolf), a rock split away from 
the mass, and rising up like a great granite tower 
It was the refuge of Lupo, the cruel robber chief- 
tain, until Francis converted him and made a Friar 
of him. In Religion, so gentle had he become, 
that he was known as Frate Agnello (Brother 
Lamb). 

16. And finally you reach La Penna, marked 
(like so many other points) with a Chapel, and 
protected, for the safety of the giddy, with a stout 
iron railing. For we are on the very brink of the 
sheerest precipice of rock, 700 feet in height. 
From La Penna you may gaze over the whole 
extent of the smiling fertile Casentino, and likewise 
behold all the splendours of the Valleys of the 
Arno and the Tiber, the Perugian Hills, the 
Umbrian Plains, and the wild country of the 
Legations and the Marches. 




Photograph fry \ .mm, Florence 

Tl-IE Rock OK THE STIGMATA, I w\ VERNA 

To face p. 240 



FEAST OF THE STIGMATA 241 

The Feast of the Stigmata is kept on the 17th 
September, the day on which the event took place 
being already dedicated to the greater festival of 
Holy Cross. It is observed by the whole Church 
as a "double," with proper, introit, collect, gradual, 
and offertory in the Mass, and by the Franciscan 
Order as a " double of the second class " with 
proper hymns and antiphons for Vespers, Matins 
and Lauds. Our first visit to La Verna was paid 
on this, to that Community, greatest of all Feasts. 
We arrived on the afternoon of the 16th, and it 
was well that the good Fathers knew of our coming 
and had reserved comfortable quarters for us, or 
we should have fared but roughly. For it so fell 
out that the 1 7th was a Sunday, and the toilers of 
the countryside were free to come in numbers. 
Hundreds of peasants had already poured in. 
Every square inch of sleeping room had long since 
been allotted. We rose at midnight for Matins. 
The weather had changed. A mountain storm 
was raging in full fury. The rain poured in tor- 
rents, the wind howled, distant thunder rumbled 
angrily. What a spectacle the Church presented ! 
On the benches, in the Confessionals, underneath 
the Altars, on the Altar steps, lay the recumbent 
figures of a hundred or two peasants who had 
found no other place to rest their heads. Great 
green Ginghams were stretched out to dry ; dogs, 
slept by their masters' side ; nearly every man 
had his bundle of provisions. Verily these Tuscan 

Q 



242 MOUNT LA VERNA 

peasants are at home in their Father's house. 
As the Matins' bell rang out, the dripping creatures 
rose and shook themselves, and soon the rattle of 
Rosaries showed that they too were joining in the 
Divine Praises. Matins and Lauds were chanted 
to the Tones (not monotoned) in honour of the 
great Feast. And then followed that wonderful 
procession along the loggia to the Chapel of the 
Stigmata. Crucifer with his Crucifix, on either 
side of him two acolytes with octagonal lanterns 
raised aloft on staves, led the way of the long pro- 
cession of St. Francis' sons chanting the Miserere, 
and we followed with the medley group of motley 
peasants. In the Chapel itself there was room 
only for the Friars, who knelt in a double row 
with outstretched arms ; the rest of us remained 
crowded at the open door. And, presently, on the 
very spot where the Poor Man of Assisi was trans- 
formed into the likeness of his Crucified Master, 
the rich clear voice of the Versicularian intoned 
the versicle : 

Signasti Domine servum tuum Franciscum : — 
Signis Redemptionis nostra ! came the answer- 
ing shout from hundreds of throats, some of them 
choked by the tears which it was so difficult to 
keep back. 

It was half-past two in the morning ere the long 
religious function was over. Many of the Fathers 
did not go back to bed, but betook themselves 
straight tc their Confessionals. The long series of 



A VISITORS' BOOK 243 

Masses began about three o'clock. That day some 
two thousand confessions were heard ; some two 
thousand souls received Holy Communion. Com- 
munion was still being given after midday to 
people who had been waiting hours for a chance 
of going to Confession, — and they were fasting be 
it remembered. Many had to go away with their 
devotion unsatisfied. The Fathers fed, entirely, 
about a thousand people, and, partially, quite 
double that number. And all this — all this — 
because the son of an Umbrian cloth merchant, 
now nearly seven hundred years ago, chose the 
better part, and loved God above all things, and 
his neighbour better than himself ! 

The hour of our departure had come, and our 
kind friend the guest Father brought us the 
visitors' book and asked us to write in it. A 
difficult task at all times, and we would fain have 
been excused. But it was impossible to refuse the 
polite request, and taking the book we wrote in 
halting Tuscan : 

" N N were the guests of the Fran- 
ciscan Fathers here from the to the , 

and departed from this dwelling-place of the 
Poor Ones of Christ richer men than when they 
came." 

Our mules were at the Convent gate. One last 
brief hasty visit to the Chapel of the Stigmata. 
The Novices are there with the Novice Master, 
engaged in a service of prayer. We can hear the 



244 MOUNT LA VERNA 

words of their prayers, and how can we help join- 
ing in them : 

Ant. Facta est super me manus Domini, et adduxit me 
super montem excelsum. 

$". Signasti Domine servum tuum Franciscum : 
1$. Signis Redemptionis nostrae. 

OREMUS 

Domine Jesu Christe, qui frigiscente mundo, ad inflam- 
mandum corda nostra tui amoris igne, in carne beatissimi 
Francisci Passionis tuae sacra Stigmata renovasti : concede 
propitius; ut ejus meritis et precibus crucem jugiter 
feramus et dignos fructus poenitentiae faciamus. Qui 
vivis et regnas per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen. 



A TUSCAN SUMMER RESORT 

CAMALDOLI 




CAMALDOLI 



A TUSCAN SUMMER RESORT: 
CAMALDOLI 

Camaldoli, most charming of summer resorts, is 
situated in that part of Tuscany known as the 
Casentino. It is actually within the modern pro- 
vince, and in the ancient and modern diocese, of 
Arezzo, thirty miles from the city of Arezzo itself, 
and about forty-two miles south-east of Florence. 
Camaldoli, like many another delightful place in 
old Tuscany, is not easy of access. If you are at 
Florence — and at least you can get there very 
easily — you will take the train thence to Arezzo, 
and the journey of fifty-four miles will last two, 
three, or four hours, according as your train may 
be "very direct," "direct," or "omnibus." At 
Arezzo you will get on to the quaintest diminutive 
branch-line, ending right in the heart of the 



2 4 8 CAMALDOLI 

Casentino at the busy little manufacturing town of 
Stia. The line runs for the most part through 
high acacia hedges, alongside the Arno, here little 
better than a turbulent rivulet. Descend at 
Bibbiena station or at Poppi, just beyond it. Both 
are about equi-distant from Camaldoli. The 
majolicas of Andrea della Robbia in the Church of 
San Lorenzo at Bibbiena are of surpassing beauty, 
but the castle and donjon of the once powerful 
Counts Guidi at Poppi is more imposing. Choose 
the station of descent according to your taste : you 
will have time to see either the majolicas or the 
castle before undertaking the two hours' drive 
which will bring you up to Camaldoli, most charm- 
ing of summer resorts. 

Camaldoli is situated, as the geography books 
would put it, at an altitude of 2718 feet above 
the sea-level, on that range of the Tuscan Apen- 
nines which practically divides Tuscany from the 
Romagna. Camaldoli is not a village, not even 
a hamlet. It simply consists of one huge block 
of buildings, of plainest, severest architecture, 
comprising an hotel, a church, and a monastery, 
all adjoining and communicating. The hotel is 
kept by Signor Fortunato Chiari, famous among 
Tuscan hotel-keepers, for he is part proprietor of 
the Savoy and the Grande Bretagne at Florence, 
and sole proprietor of the Victoria on the Lung' 
Arno. The monastery is inhabited by the White 
Monks of St. Romuald, known throughout the 




Photograph by 



The Castle of Poppi 



ST. ROMUALD 249 

world as the Camaldolese Order. The Church, 
dividing hotel and monastery, is common ground 
to monks and visitors. High up above the hotel 
and monastery, a good hour's walk through dense 
pine forests, is situated, fronting a splendid 
amphitheatre of pine trees, the Sacro Eremo, 
or Holy Hermitage (3680 feet), where live in 
separate cells the Camaldolese Hermits as dis- 
tinguished from the Camaldolese Monks. 

Very soon you come to see that the monks and 
hermits add an indefinable charm to the whole 
place, and begin to try and find out what the 
Camaldolese Order is. Romuald, of the noble 
family of the Onesti, Dukes of Ravenna, hav- 
ing renounced the world and joined the Bene- 
dictine Order about the year 980, came in 
course of time to aspire to a still higher form 
of the religious state. He wished to revive the 
hermit life in the Church, and with five followers 
settled about a.d. 1012 in a wild deserted spot on 
the Apennines, called the Campo Amabile, the gift 
of the Aretine Count Maldolo. The fame of the 
sanctity of Romuald and his hermits drew crowds 
of people to see and consult them. These had to 
be housed and fed in accordance with monastic 
dictates of hospitality and charity, but to the sore 
hindrance of the holy hermits in their devotions 
and avocations. Then Romuald hit upon the 
device of starting a hospice below at Campus 
Maldoli, another gift of the good Count. To 



250 CAMALDOLI 

the hospice was attached a monastery with monks 
of a less rigid observance, and to them was as- 
signed the duty of entertaining all visitors, so that 
the hermits might be left in greater freedom 
from constant interruption. The modern hotel is 
simply the ancient hospice. It will thus be seen 
that there are two distinct religious states in the 
Camaldolese Order — the Eremitic and the Monas- 
tic — as is typified in the arms of the Order : on a 
field celestial, two silver doves drinking out of 
the same golden chalice. 

The Hermitage, as at present constituted, con- 
sists of some twenty separate cells or little cottages, 
divided by paved footpaths after the manner of 
a village, a beautiful church which is practically 
one choir, a building in which the lay-brothers 
live (for they do not live the life of hermits), and 
an Observatory, the whole enclosed by a high 
stone wall. Each cell contains a little chapel or 
oratory with altar, a living room with bed let into 
the wall, a passage entrance, and a room for the 
storage of firewood. Attached to each cell is a 
goodly piece of flower and kitchen garden, cul- 
tivated by the hermit himself in the brief leisure 
which his avocations allow him. 

The " rule " of the hermits, if somewhat miti- 
gated since the days of St. Romuald, is still 
abundantly severe. They eat no meat, observe 
two Lents every year, and on all Fridays dine off 
bread and water. Each hermit takes his meals 



THE HERMITAGE 251 

by himself: his food is passed into his cell by a 
revolving dumb-waiter, so that he does not even 
see the lay-brother who brings it. No meat is 
allowed in the hermitage under any considera- 
tion. A father who falls sick is removed down 
to the monastery infirmary, and even there it 
is only by a dispensation obtained some thirty 
years ago that meat may be eaten. Seven times 
in the twenty-four hours the hermits leave their 
cells, however inclement the weather, whatever 
the season of the year, and betake themselves to 
the hermitage church to sing the Divine Office. 1 
They rise at half-past one in the night-time for 
Matins, Lauds, and Meditation, lasting an hour 
and a half. The strictest silence is observed, and 
speaking or a brotherly reunion only allowed on 
stated occasions. Twelve times alone in the 
year — on the principal festivals, that is — do the 
hermits eat together, and even then speaking is 
not allowed until the meal is over. 

The monks at the monastery below live much 
the same life, but it is less trying in being ceno- 
bitic, and daily walks abroad are permitted. Of 
course their raison detre has to some extent 
disappeared. They are no longer foresters, be- 
cause their woods have been taken from them ; 
they are no longer hosts, because their hospice 
has been turned into a modern hotel. Up to the 
year 1866, any man, whether rich or poor, could 

1 "Septies in die laudem dixi Tibi" (Ps. cxviii.). 



252 CAMALDOLI 

have three days' hotel accommodation at Camal- 
doli free of cost — so different are mediaeval ideas 
to modern. Most of the modern monks have 
been hermits at one time or another, and it is 
astonishing how readily they return to the severer 
form of life when their superiors allow it. The 
monks are by no means unapproachable. They 
mix freely enough with the hotel guests, and are 
ever on the look-out to render you some kindly 
service. And I observed that both they, and 
the two or three hermits with whom I had 
speech, were full of that sunny cheerfulness which 
I have ever noted as a characteristic of monastic 
orders. Curiously enough — or perhaps not 
curiously — the severer the Order and its rule, 
the more cheerful do its members seem. I well 
remember, years ago, my head then full of very 
different notions, how the famous hagiographer, 
Alban Butler, startled me when I first came 
across a passage in which he says : " Gaiety 
of soul (which always attends virtue) is particu- 
larly necessary in all who are called to a life 
of perfect solitude, in which nothing is more 
pernicious than sadness." x The "gaiety of soul " 
of the Camaldolese, if unobtrusive, is most cap- 
tivating. 

The Camaldolese are dressed in white. Romuald 
had at first given his children the traditional black 
habit of the Benedictines, but one day, sleeping 
1 Life of St. Bruno. 



DRESS OF THE CAMALDOLESE 253 

by the fount near his cell, he was favoured with a 
vision of a great ladder leading from earth to 
heaven, on which he saw a host innumerable of 
his brethren mounting to Paradise, but all clothed 
in white. He awoke to change the colour of their 
habit from black to white — so, at least, runs the 
legend. The habit of both monks and hermits is 
exactly similar : a white tunic and scapular, a long 
white cloak worn on certain occasions abroad and 
in choir, and the ample wide-sleeved cowl of the 
Benedictines, worn only in choir. Their heads are 
shaven, save for a very narrow corona, and their 
beards are allowed to grow. In summer the 
monks wear a huge broad-brimmed straw hat 
when taking their walks abroad. The dress of 
the lay-brothers has a few scarcely perceptible 
differences, but you will easily recognise a lay- 
brother by his leathern belt, whereas a father or 
novice wears a girdle of white webbing. In winter 
and rough weather, when the blinding snow is 
falling, the hermits wrap themselves up in yet 
another cloak when summoned to church, so that 
they may reach the choir as dry as possible. You 
will notice a room in the church entrance with 
rows of pegs where these cloaks are hung up to 
dry during the chanting of the Divine Office. 

The hermitage and the monastery are each 
ruled by a Father Superior (he is not called a 
Prior as with other Benedictines) under the 
governance of the "Padre Maggiore," the head of 



254 CAMALDOLI 

the whole Order. On our first visit to the hermitage 
we had the good fortune to be overtaken in the 
forest by the Padre Maggiore, Dom Costanzo 
Giovanelli, who greeted us with all the cheerful 
courtesy and gentle "gaiety of soul" of the real 
solitary, and, learning our errand, took us under 
his guidance. A living Saint he seemed to me, 
but my old oxen-driver called him " un Angelo 
del Paradiso," — a juster description perhaps. The 
Superior of the monastery was Dom Pietro 
Orseolo Stoppa, cheeriest of companions and 
kindest of friends, and at the head of the hermitage 
was Dom Ambrogio Pieratelli, a majestic and very 
devout solitary, now gone to Brazil to start a 
hermitage in the wild pampas of Rio Grande 
do Sul. 

The whole property of the Camaldolese Order 
— the hermitage, the monastery, the hospice, the 
library, the church itself, and the vast pine forests 
which for centuries they had so sedulously culti- 
vated — was appropriated by the Government in 
1866. The Order pay rent to the Government 
for such portions of their own property as they 
now occupy (the hermitage and the monastery), 
and the forestry work is in the hands of Govern- 
ment officials. Their splendid library has been 
removed to Poppi. Even in the stormy times of 
1 8^6, an Italian deputy was found with the courage 
to raise his voice in the Chamber against this 
wholesale confiscation, and prayed that an excep- 



SECULAR CAMALDOLI 255 

tion to the general law of suppression might be 
made in favour of the Camaldolese Order, 1 so 
beloved of Dante, the greatest son of Italy. The 
suggestion was greeted with " laughter," and 
Camaldoli shared the same fate as many other 
noble religious monuments. 

But monks and hermits are not the only at- 
traction of Camaldoli. There is our own very 
secular daily and delightful existence, the moun- 
tain excursions, the riding, shooting, and fishing 
in trout streams. Camaldoli abounds in an 
astonishing diversity of walks and climbs, and 
not only in walks and climbs, but in strolls and 
rambles. You can take a bath-chair up to the 
hermitage by the new road, or you can go to the 
summit of La Falterona, a stiff excursion which 
takes two days. Horses, ponies, and donkeys 
can be got from the neighbouring village of 
Serravalle. By an excellent system the charge 
for them is put in the hotel bill, so that you 
cannot possibly be overcharged by their genial 
owners, though the easy art of fleecing the 
foreigner is but little known as yet in the 
Casentino. The animals seem to have picked 
up the gentle manners of the monks : they do 
not kick, so that one pony is quite enough for 

1 The Benedictine Abbey of Monte Cassino, founded by Benedict 
himself in 529, was, I believe, the only religious house exempted 
from the law of suppression, — largely, it is said, owing to private 
strenuous representations of Mr. Gladstone. 



256 CAMALDOLI 

two people : the pedestrian for the time being 
has but to hang on to the animal's tail, and he 
will be comfortably pulled up the steepest de- 
clivity. The people of the Casentino are simple 
and unspoiled. Here they still speak of a man not 
as a "man," but as a "Christian" 1 to them the 
world is divided into Christians {i.e. Catholics), 
Jews, whom they do not count, and pagans, 
whom they have never seen. Hence all the 
real world to them is composed of Christians. 
"They have more Christians than ever in the 
hotel this year," I heard an old hewer of wood 
explaining to a Protestant lady. Passing through 
a field I called the attention of our donkey-driver, 
rather anxiously, to an indubitable bull : " Have 
no fear," he made answer, " I know the animal, 
and he is quite accustomed to the presence of 
Christians. Eh ! when they are not in the habit 
of seeing Christians, they will even run a Chris- 
tian down. Eh ! sfido ! " Still better was his 
remark about the donkey, Giorgio, who one day 
drank up a bucket of wine, "and," says he, "the 
young rascal got as drunk as a Christian ! " 

A delightful excursion, and which may be done 
in a day, is that to the summit of the Poggio 
Scali. And mountaineering, if you wish it, is 
made very easy at Camaldoli. The halt, the 
maimed, the blind, need shrink from no ordinary 
excursion if they go in a treggia. A treggia is 
a species of rough sleigh, on which is placed a 




Phoiogi apli by Dominic Carmichael 

Bird's-eye View of the Hermitage, Camai.dou 




Photograph by 



Mrs. Carmiciiai 



A Treggia 



To face p. 256 



EXCURSIONS IN A TREGGIA 257 

basket frame capable of seating two people, and 
comfortably arranged with slanting back and 
cushions. It is drawn by a pair of the magni- 
ficent white oxen of Tuscany. No matter how 
steep or how stony, how crooked or how narrow 
the path, these patient, sure-footed brutes go 
steadily and smoothly onwards and upwards until 
the very pinnacle of your destination is reached. 
And really the treggia glides along with wonder- 
ful smoothness, and the motion is far from un- 
pleasant. Coming down is, of course, another 
matter from the point of view of comfort, but a 
descent of some 2000 feet in a treggia would 
assuredly cure the worst liver complaint from 
which evil liver ever suffered. 

The road to the Poggio Scali leads us first up 
the path to the hermitage, through the dense and 
dark pine-forests which afford cool shelter even 
from the fierce August sun of Italy. Here we 
dawdle, never weary of watching the teams of 
oxen dragging up the pine-trees which have been 
felled in the valleys below. It is a difficult and 
arduous operation. It takes a team of eight of 
these great beasts to drag up one tree, for the 
ascent is almost sheer. And it needs much art 
on the part of the drivers, and the wildest cries, 
with which the whole valley resounds, to keep 
the eight oxen moving at once. The trees are 
taken down to Camaldoli by the new road from 
the Eremo, and sawn in a mill near the monastery. 

R 



258 CAMALDOLI 

The Camaldolese Order in 1458 set up the first 
hydraulic saw-mill in Tuscany. This is one of 
the long list of their benefits to civilisation, 1 and 
standing in the shelter of the forests no longer 
their own, we remember gratefully that, if they 
felled trees and sold them, the rule of the Order 
obliged them to plant five thousand new pines 
every year, and that they usually planted double 
the number of their obligation. 

Arrived at the hermitage — it is true that we 
were up very early and have already had a cold 
douche in the hotel bath — we confess to a feel- 
ing not unakin to hunger, to a sensation that 
may be frankly described as thirst. But it is 
not our first visit to the Sacro Eremo, and we 
know that in the lay-brothers' quarter there we 
can, at trifling cost, purchase refreshment that 
will send us strengthened on our way. Soon on 
a wooden table in the courtyard there is spread 
before us fresh brown bread, butter (such butter !), 
anchovies, and preserved tunny, to be followed 
hard after by a flagon of deep-coloured, sweet, 
yellow wine, tasting like the juice squeezed 
straight from the grape, and which must surely 

1 One of their many benefits to scholars are the "Annales 
Camaldulenses " (907 to 1764), "quibus plura interseruntur turn 
ceteras Italico-monasticas res, turn historiam Ecclesiasticam 
remque Diplomaticam illustrantia." This is but a modest de- 
' scription of their varied contents. Publication commenced at 
Venice in 1755. Authors, Dom Giovanni Benedetto Mittarelli and 
Dom Anselmo Costadoni, monks of the Order, 



POGGIO SCALI 259 

have been the kind of liquor brewed by the 
Patriarch Noah, so sound is it and so strong. 
How many a time, on the return from a stiff 
climb in keenest Apennine air, have I blessed 
the holy hermitage and its simple, wholesome, 
ever-welcome fare. 

On leaving the Eremo, by a path trying at 
times even to the oxen and treggia, we climb to 
the Prato Bertone, and along the ridge of the 
Giogana, to the Prato al Soglio, to Giogo Sec- 
cheta, and, finally, after a journey that need only 
have lasted three hours but for constant dawdling, 
botanising, and refreshing at the hermitage, to 
Poggio Scali, our destination (4952 feet). Here 
the splendour of the view takes away the rem- 
nants of the breath left in us. To the east, over 
the bare arid range of the Romagna Mountains, 
with scarce a trace of vegetation visible, and not 
a solitary habitation, we see the bright glitter of 
the Adriatic ; to the west, though but faintly 
to-day, a silver sheen that must reflect from the 
Tyrrhenian Sea ; right opposite to us, with its 
curious fringe of ragged, storm-tossed beech, the 
Mountain of La Penna, where the eagle nests and 
the Tuscan chamois x climbs to sniff the night air ; 
to the south-east, in the far dim distance the three 
peaks which mark the old-world Republic of San 
Marino ; to the south, distant onlv some 20 miles, 
the noble crest of Mount La v'erna, where the 

1 Mufione. 



260 CAMALDOLI 

dearest Saint that ever lived, now close upon seven 
hundred years ago, received the marks of the 
sacred Stigmata ; in the far south-east Monte 
Amiata, whence comes all the wealth of Tuscan 
quicksilver, and the red earths and ochres called 
after Sienna ; and again, in the west, the range of 
the Secchieta, whither, by the Consuma Pass, 
you may return to Florence and the outer Tuscan 
world beyond. 

Every mountain, every valley, has its name 
and history, and Poldo, the old treggia driver, can 
tell us something about most of them. It seems 
as if one could gaze forever on so splendid, so 
varied an array of Nature's beauties. But after 
half-an-hour in the keen air of this mountain 
summit, our minds wander naturally to things 
more mundane, and forth from the depths of the 
treggia we produce an ample basket, placed there 
by Signor Gagliardi, most thoughtful of hotel 
managers. It contains a number of packets done 
up in spotless white paper, each bearing a most 
inviting legend. There are thin slices of the 
small juicy ham of the Casentino, slices of Tuscan 
tongue, of cold veal, and the rosbiffi of old Italy ; 
a cold pullet all ready divided for use with Nature's 
knives and forks ; a hunch of goat's-milk cheese ; 
a bag of purple plums and a bag of purple 
peaches ; and — dulcis in f undo — two lordly bottles 
of the purple wine of Mount Chianti. Old Poldo 
has already, before our last steep ascent, filled a 



LA FALTERONA 261 

two-litre flask with the ice-cold limpid water of the 
Fonte Porcareccia. For condiment we have the 
best of all sauces — an appetite born of Apennine 
air, and behind the shelter of a stunted beech- 
clump, we make a meal that neither Paris nor 
London could have furnished forth. 

This is a fair type of a daily excursion from 
Camaldoli, but the great expedition is to La 
Falterona (5410 feet), the highest point in this 
range of the Apennines. It is a six hours' climb, 
and cannot comfortably be undertaken in one day; 
besides, you will want to see the sun set and the 
sun rise. It is possible to sleep on the summit. 
In 1882 the Italian Alpine Club opened a com- 
fortable shelter there, which is denominated the 
" Ricovero Dante " in memory of the place which 
the Falterona finds in the Divine Comedy. It 
consists of three rooms, a kitchen, and an attic ; 
one room is always open, the others are accessible 
by keys to be obtained at the Alpine Station of 
Stia. About one thousand feet below the summit 
is an historical spot celebrated by Dante, a bub- 
bling rill of clear water, which is nothing less than 
the source of the Arno. 1 It is difficult to say which 
is the finer of the sights we have come out to see 
— the rising of the sun over the Adriatic, or its 
slow fall to rest behind the Tyrrhenian Sea. 

1 Un fumicel che nasce in Falterona 
E cento miglia di corso nol sazia. 

— Purgatorio, Canto xiv. 



262 CAMALDOLI 

The comfortable hotel, with that simple good 
taste which characterises every detail of its 
management, is not called an hotel as though 
one were in Paris or London, but is designated 
by the good old-fashioned Italian word Albergo : 
the Grande Albergo di Camaldoli is its full style 
and title. It consists of two main quadrangles, 
with passages, cloister-like, running round, and 
rooms opening out of them. The effect is 
monastic, and pleasing as being so thoroughly 
in harmony with the surroundings. Portraits of 
Camaldolese Cardinals decorate the walls of the 
lofty reading-room, and old prints of a more or 
less ecclesiastical character greet one at every 
turn. There is no tinsel, or gilt, or plush, or 
great staring mirrors, such as the Philistine so 
dearly loves. But there is solidity, comfort, 
spotless cleanliness, and a table wholesome and 
liberal, justly based on the appetite Camaldoli is 
famed for producing. Within the hotel precincts 
is a post and telegraph office ; letters leave once 
a day and come twice. Attached to the monas- 
tery is an ancient pharmacy, once the property of 
the monks, and where their old-time cordials and 
balsams can still be purchased from the modern 
lessee, our postmaster. And down in the base- 
ment, well out of our way, is a rustic hostelry 
frequented by the contadini of the mountain 
sides, and the travelling pedlars, who come great 
distances to offer us their quaint wares. This, 



A TUSCAN HOTEL 263 

though in the same building, has no connection 
with the Grande Albergo. It is kept by a famous 
character and charming conversationalist called 
Francesco Salvi, but who is much better known 
by his sobriquet Pisello, given him because he 
cooks peas so well. Nicknames run in a family 
in Tuscany, and so his wife is called Pisella or 
Mistress Pea, his son Pisellino or young Pea, and 
his daughter Pisellina or Sweet Pea. 

The society of the Grande Albergo is very 
select. It is much affected by diplomatists 
accredited to the Quirinal or the Vatican, who 
often for reasons of distance cannot get home 
on leave, but who as foreigners cannot possibly 
weather the summer heats of the Eternal City. 
And Camaldoli is a great favourite with the 
aristocracy of Florence and Rome. The diver- 
sions of the place are of the simplest — we walk, 
ride, shoot, fish, get up an occasional picnic, and 
come home thoroughly tired and ready for early 
bed. No one dreams of starting dances or con- 
certs or charades. No strolling players or musi- 
cians ever trouble us, and not even the inevitable 
conjuror ventures near Camaldoli — he would fear 
to find us in bed. Thus the summer slips away 
in simple, healthy, tranquil happiness, and in 
early September we descend to the plains forti- 
fied in body and spirit, and blessing the kind fate 
that has guided our footsteps to Camaldoli, most 
charming of summer resorts. 



264 CAMALDOLI 

Let not the elect accuse me of breach of trust 
in thus seeking to make Camaldoli more widely 
known in the wide world. They need fear no 
descent of the Philistines. Or if the Philistine 
should come he could not stand the life of the 
place for more than two days. The Spartan 
simplicity and cleanliness of the hotel, the order 
and decency, the wholesome fare, the pure un- 
adulterated wine, above all the near neighbour- 
hood of holy monks and hermits, reminding him 
of a past which he scorns and a future for which 
he has no liking, would soon cause him to take 
precipitate flight. He will return and tell his 
kind that Camaldoli is a "hole," that the hotel 
is a "barn," that there isn't a "blessed thing" to 
do or to see, not even a " caff^-chontong " in the 
evening, that the hermits look like " cut-throats " 
and the monks like "escaped lunatics." He will 
go back to his Jungfrau and his Dolomites, to 
hotels that will fleece him, and to adventurers 
that will flatter him, and Camaldoli will be 
reserved forever to the few who ask nothing 
better than the unalloyed delights of simple 
summer-holiday happiness. 




MONTECATINI 



THE TUSCAN TUNBRIDGE: 
MONTECATINI 

Tuscany is commonly called the Garden of 
Italy, and the Valley of the Nievole the Garden 
of Tuscany. Montecatini is situated in one of 
the loveliest corners of this valley : hence it 
follows, by the rules of the syllogism, that Mon- 
tecatini is a very beautiful spot. It was the 
glories of the Val di Nievole ("one tufted soft- 
ness of fresh springing leaves ") that drew from 
Mr. Ruskin one of his finest word pictures. 
Here it is, so that the reader may accurately 
know what his eyes will daily behold if ever he 
come to dwell in this Valley of the Olive and 
the Vine. 

"The Val di Nievole is some five miles wide 

by thirty long, and is simply one field of corn or 

265 



266 MONTECATINI 

rich grass land. . . . Undivided by hedges, the 
fields are yet meshed across and across by an 
intricate network of posts and chains. The posts 
are maple-trees, and the chains, garlands of vine. 
The meshes of this net each enclose two or three 
acres of the corn-land, with a row of mulberry- 
trees up the middle for silk. There are poppies, 
and bright ones too, about the banks and road- 
sides ; but the corn of the Val di Nievole is too 
proud to grow with poppies, and is set with wild 
gladiolus instead, deep violet. Here and there a 
mound of crag rises out of the fields, crested with 
stone-pine, and studded all over with the large 
stars of the white rock-cistus. Quiet streams, 
filled with close crowds of the golden waterflag, 
wind beside meadows painted with the purple 
orchis. On each side of the great plain is a 
wilderness of hills, veiled at their feet with a 
grey cloud of olive woods ; above, sweet with 
glades of chestnut ; peaks of more distant blue, 
still to-day, 1 embroidered with snow, are rather 
to be thought of as vast precious stones than 
mountains, 2 for all the state of the world's palaces 
has been hewn out of their marble." 3 

Montecatini is situated in the modern Province 
of Lucca. It is reached from Florence — on the 
Pistoia- Lucca- Pisa line — in about an hour and 

i 29th April 1872. 

' The mountains of Carrara. 

3 "Fors Clavigera," vol. ii. Letter XVIII. 



A TUSCAN WATERING-PLACE 267 

twenty minutes, and from Leghorn in about two 
hours and a half. The place is divided into two very- 
distinct and different parts : the Baths of Monte- 
catini, situated by the Station, and Montecatini 
Alto, a very ancient township and famous fortress 
of the Florentine Republic, which is about two 
miles distant, perched high in front of us on the 
sheerest of hills. It is to the Baths that fashion- 
able Italy flocks during the season of May to 
September. The afflicted of gout, dyspepsia, 
rheumatism, and liver, come there to be cured ; 
but they are an insignificant minority, for it must 
be owned that the vast majority of the gay crowd 
who so steadfastly go through the cure seem to have 
nothing whatsoever the matter with them. To 
tell the truth, Montecatini is an extremely pleasant 
place in which to enjoy oneself ; the cure is really 
only an agreeable pastime, and so, the wish being 
father to the thought, a widespread belief has 
grown up that the cure once a year is a very 
desirable measure as a preventive against all pos- 
sible ills of the body. 'Tis the unusual case of 
cure being better than prevention. I am free to 
admit as an undoubted matter of fact, that the cure 
does seem beneficial even to the perfect in health. 
The average sound man leaves Montecatini with 
a clearer eye, a fresher face, a rosier tongue, and 
an appetite that is resented when he gets home. 
He also leaves with the resolve that he will cer- 
tainly return next year, and so it comes to pass 



268 MONTECATINI 

that he goes on returning all the years of his life. 
Indeed there are hale, hearty old gentlemen there, 
habitues of thirty and forty years' standing, fine 
sound specimens of that vanishing class, the Tuscan 
gentleman farmer, who, it is to be feared, would 
worry themselves into a serious illness if anything 
occurred to hinder them from resorting to the 
annual prevention of the Montecatini cure. There 
are those, too, who say that besides curing the 
body, the waters of Montecatini strengthen the 
brain and quicken dull wits, but this theory has 
not, that I could hear of, found favour with 
Dr. Grocco, the leading physician of the Baths. 
Perhaps he fears that an acknowledgment of it 
would cause a too formidable inroad of dunces 
and dunderheads, who might be hurtful to the 
sick, and would certainly lower the tone of the 
sound. 

The cure consists in drinking waters and taking 
baths. There are a number of pump-houses, very 
elegant some of them, mostly the property of the 
State, but now under the management of a private 
and very enterprising company. The principal of 
these are the RR. Terme Leopoldine, the Tettuc- 
cio, the Rinfresco, the Bagno Regio, the Olivo, the 
Regina, and the Savi. The only springs of im- 
portance in private hands which are now open, are 
the Tamerici. There is nothing to show that the 
waters of Montecatini, like so many other springs 
in Italy, were known to the Romans. They first 



THE TERME LEOPOLDINE 269 

appear in history in the 14th century, when the 
waters of the Tettuccio alone had been discovered. 
Montecatini for a long while fell into neglect and 
disrepute. It was Peter Leopold, the second 
Grand Duke of the House of Lorraine- Hapsburg 
(reigned 1 745-1 790), who raised Montecatini 
into the front rank of watering-places, and to 
him entirely it owes its present beautiful aspect 
and flourishing condition. The Terme Leo- 
poldine, so called in his honour, is a fine red- 
brick colonnaded building, still redolent of all 
that simple elegance peculiar to the 18th cen- 
tury. As we enter the handsome vestibule, 
so strongly has the place preserved its original 
character that we fully expect to see a crowd 
such as Chesterfield saw at Bath or Chatham at 
Tunbridge Wells, an assembly wearing wigs and 
patches, ivory-hilted swords, satin knee-breeches, 
paste buckles, laced stomachers, and Pompadour 
gowns. 

The waters of the Terme Leopoldine are only 
used externally. The Tettuccio is the favourite 
morning lounge. Here the waters of the other 
springs, Olivo, Regina, and Savi, may be had in 
fiaschiy so that many people do not budge outside 
the great rendezvous all morning. The Tettuccio 
is of considerable dimensions, tastefully laid out 
with plants, and sheltered from the fierce heat by 
vast expanses of canvas. The hearty cheeriness 
of the Tuscans is proverbial, and the din of some 



270 MONTECATINI 

two thousand Tuscan voices in one and the same 
covered inclosure is a new and startling experience. 
All the voices are discussing, with obvious relish 
and unnecessary detail, symptoms* and the present 
progress of the cure ; all the owners of the voices 
are apparently in the most robust health — certainly 
none of them are affected in the lungs. Only 
once in the morning is the babel of voices hushed 
for a moment. " Eccolo I eccolo ! " one hears on all 
sides. There is no need to say who is meant. 
Verdi, attended by Boito and Tamagno, has 
entered the establishment, and a moment of 
reverent silence falls upon the gossiping crowd. 
Verdi never misses his ten days at Montecatini 
every July, and he attributes his long life of 
eighty-six years and his hale old age to the bene- 
ficent effects of a regular sojourn at Montecatini. 
The Rinfresco is the afternoon lounge. It is a 
pleasant garden with the great spring of crystal 
clear water bubbling up in the middle. Here the 
voices do not drown the band ; the serious part 
of the cure is done with for the day, and an air of 
something like peace has come over even viva- 
cious Neapolitans and Sicilians. The waters of 
the Rinfresco are drunk copiously during the 
afternoon, but that is only a make-believe busi- 
ness. The water is perfectly harmless, and has 
no other effect than of doing what its name 
implies — refreshing. There is a delightful 
little swimming bath at the Rinfresco, a daily 



HUNGERING FOR WATER 271 

dip in which is perfectly consonant with the 
cure. 

The waters of Montecatini are limpid as crystal, 
and free from all smell. They are salt to the 
taste, but pleasant and palatable, having no trace 
of astringency or bitterness. They are essentially 
refreshing, and seem at the very time of drinking 
to convey a savour of health and the conviction 
of their curative powers. A bilious subject once 
exclaimed that he hungered for some of the 
waters of Montecatini, and the paradoxical phrase 
is certainly the most forcible I ever heard ex- 
pressive of thirst. The Tamerici, Savi, Olivo, 
and Regina waters are powerfully aperient ; 
Tettuccio is mild, and if taken alone must be 
consumed in great quantities ; Rinfresco, as 
we have seen, is more or less of a for- 
mality. A 50c. ticket admits once a day to 
all the springs which belong to the Company ; 
there is, of course, a further small charge for 
using the waters which are private property like 
the Tamerici (30c). At all the springs the poor 
are given the water gratis, and there is even a 
section of baths for them at the Terme Leo- 
poldine. 

The springs of Montecatini belong to the class 
of muriated waters. Here, for the benefit of 
those who care for such things, is an analysis of 
three of them : — 



272 



MONTECATINI 





Tettuccio. 


Olivo. 


Regina. 


Oxygen . 


0.0652 


0.0037 


0.0039 


Azoto . 


0.1922 


0.0255 


0.0162 


Carbonic Acid Gas 


0.2861 




... 


Bicarbonate of Lime 


0.0241 


0.3228 


0.2578 


„ of Magnesia 


0.0736 


0.1 126 


0.1488 


„ of Iron 




0.0086 


0.0022 


Sulphate of Lime . 


0.5219 


0.3252 


0.8735 


„ of Potassium . 


0.0585 


0.0787 


0.1648 


„ of Soda . 


0.3087 


0.8293 


0.0669 


Chloride of Sodium 


4.6076 


6.2109 


10.4788 


„ of Magnesia . 


0.4508 


0.1258 


0.2130 


Bromides 






traces 


Iodides . .:. • . 


• .. 


... 


traces 


Fluorides 


... 


. .. 


traces 


Phosphate of Iron . 


... 


0.0195 


0.0046 


„ of Alum 


0.0087 


0.0063 


0.0004 


„ of Lime 








Salts of Manganese 






traces 


Lithium .... 




... 


traces 


Silicic Acid . 




0.0082 


0.0065 


Nitrates .... 


traces 


... 


traces 


Organic Substances 




0.0072 


traces 1 



The cure is differently carried out by different 
people according to fancy and the Doctor's orders. 
The waters should be taken fasting, and more 
than one kind of water is nearly always recom- 
mended. Here is a programme of a cure drawn 
up by the present writer, based on practical ex- 
perience and the happiest results. Ailment : a 
"touch of liver," but the programme is equally 
suitable to people in the soundest health : — 

Rise at 6 a.m. Sally forth at 7. Stroll, very 
leisurely, to the Tamerici spring (£ mile). Drink 
one glass of water, and pass a quarter of an 



1 Plinio Schivardi : "Le Acque Minerali d'ltalia," page 332. 



PROGRAMME OF A CURE 273 

hour. Then on to Olivo, Regina, and Savi. 
Drink one glass of water and pass a quarter of 
an hour at each. Then to the gay rendezvous 
at the Tettuccio. Drink four glasses of water 
and pass a couple of hours reading, chatting, 
overhauling people, and listening to the band 
when it can be heard above the din of voices. 
Stroll, always very leisurely, back to the hotel. 
Lunch 11 to 12. Smoke, chat, and read 12 to 
1. Sleep soundly, during the great heat, 1 to 
4. Out again. Crawl gently to the Rinfresco 
Have half-an-hour's paddle in the plunge. 
Drink two glasses of water for the sake of 
appearances. Then another gentle stroll or 
drive, or better still take the Funicular Railway 
up to Montecatini Alto and get a breath of 
mountain air. Dinner 7. Afterwards to the 
Varices, to the ball at the Casino, to the tra- 
velling circus, the travelling conjuror, or the 
travelling concert-giver. Bed when you please. 
N.B. — Everything to be done very leisurely : 
there is no hurry in the world, and the heat is 
great. 

Many people fear a cure at a watering-place on 
account of the severe dietetic regime to which 
they are subjected. But the famous Dr. Grocco, 
the leading physician at Montecatini, is not over 
severe. You may not eat oysters or tunny, but 
then who wants to eat oysters in August, or tunny 
outside of Lent. If you insist upon having eggs, 

s 



274 MONTECATINI 

they may not be hard boiled. Croute-au-pot and 
bouillabaisse are on the forbidden list, but the 
most fastidious gourmet can hardly object to the 
many varieties of plain consommes and purees for 
ten days. You must do without eel, carp, lobster, 
salmon (which cannot be got in Tuscany even if 
wanted), and cuttlefish (which no Englishman 
would look at even if provided) ; but there is surely 
no occasion to grumble when one may still eat 
mullet, soles, whiting, trout, and dentate. Beef, 
mutton, veal, chicken, turkey, pheasant, snipe, 
pigeon, quail — all may be freely eaten. It seems 
at first sight as if there were nothing else left to 
prohibit ; but pig, boar, hare, goose, duck, teal, 
and liver are taboo. It is only in the matter of 
what we drink that the Doctor is a trifle severe. 
For ten days we should try and be content with a 
simple table wine, white or red — no whisky, no 
punch or negus (in a Tuscan August, too — what 
a deprivation !), no wines of Spain or Portugal or 
Sicily, and above all, no liqueurs. 

There are excellent hotels at Montecatini. The 
Locanda Maggiore, a vast and handsome 18th 
century pile built by the Grand Duke Peter 
Leopold, is the principal one. In this building 
are situated the Post-Office, the Theatre, and the 
Casino. The Pace is another first-class hotel. 
Both are near the station, whence a beautiful 
avenue of ilex and maples, flanked on either side 
by rich gardens and picturesque villas, leads past 



A FAMOUS DOCTOR 275 

the Terme Leopoldine and the other pump-houses, 
straight to the rendezvous of the Tettuccio. There 
are other excellent hotels, and plenty of pensions 
and lodgings. 

The moving spirit of Montecatini is Dr. Pietro 
Grocco, whose name will be well known to 
readers of the Lancet, for he enjoys far more than 
a merely Italian celebrity. He resides in Florence, 
where his clientele is enormous, and he is in con- 
stant requisition all over the Kingdom. But the 
passion of his life is Montecatini, in whose waters 
he has unbounded faith. He is to be found at all 
hours during the season, either at the Locanda 
Maggiore or in his consulting - room at the 
Tettuccio. In the interests of busy London 
patients I recommend his arrangements for receiv- 
ing interviews to the busy physicians of Harley 
Street. Let us say that he receives at the 
Tettuccio at 9 o'clock, and that forty of us want 
to see him that morning. His vigilant custos gives 
to each of us a number in the order in which we 
arrive. Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, say, will wait their turn 
at once ; but it is obviously useless for say Nos. 
21, 22, 23, 24, 25, to wait at the beginning of the 
morning, and they go off to drink the waters and 
hear the band. Dr. Grocco's system is that the 
lowest number in waiting should have precedence 
of all others. No. 23, we will say, returns while 
No. 31 is consulting, and 23 goes in immediately 
after 31, much to the annoyance of 32, who has 



276 MONTECATINI 

been waiting half-an-hour and knew nothing of 
the system. But the arrangement works well : it 
sets the patient free, and saves time, temper, 
mental anxiety, and a world of weary waiting. 

Very delightful are the excursions which may 
be made from Montecatini. The visitor should 
by no means fail to drive over to Collodi and see 
the garden of the Lucchese Marquis Garzoni, 
famous in Italy, and the very model of an Italian 
garden with its statues and busts, its fountains 
and falls, its fantastic beds and borders, and its 
noble terraces. Busy little Pescia, too, is close 
at hand ; so is artistic Pistoia ; and industrious 
and beautiful Lucca is not far distant. Eight 
minutes in the newly built Funicular Railway 
brings one to the summit of Montecatini Alto, 
1300 feet above the level of the Tyrrhenian Sea, 
where a complete change of air may be had for 
the minimum of bodily exertion. The Funicular 
runs every half-hour, or every quarter of an hour 
if there be four passengers. This easy access to 
hilltop breezes forms one of the great charms of 
residence at the Baths. There is now a good 
restaurant in the old-world township, and it is 
pleasant to stay up there and dine, and see the sun 
set over the wonderful panorama of the Valley of 
the Nievole. The echoes of music and laughter, 
the shrill cries of children at play, the songs of 
home-going peasants, the rhythmical rumble of 
the ox- waggons, the jingling bells of country 




^ 



THE GROTTO GIUSTI 277 

carriages, the cheery crack ! crack ! crack ! of the 
drivers' whips — all these sounds rise up to us 
here where we are, mingled with the melodious 
hum of insects and the ceaseless soothing sing- 
song of the frogs and the unwearied cicale. It is 
a moment of peace and blissful beauty such as is 
only to be found in this Garden of the Garden of 
Italy. 

But the most remarkable sight near Monte- 
catini, distant only three miles, is the Grotto 
Giusti at Monsummano. The Grotto was dis- 
covered accidentally in 1849, and the discovery 
of its healing properties was likewise due to 
chance : a rheumatic peasant, one of the first 
crowd of curious sight-seers, came out of the 
Grotto with his pains wonderfully the better. 
The Grotto is situated at the base of Monte 
Monsummano, on property which belonged to 
the father of Giuseppe Giusti (1 809-1 850), the 
pet poet of the Italian Revolution. It is covered 
with a splendour of stalactites and stalagmites, 
and stretches a thousand feet or more into the 
bowels of the mountain. The entrance to it is 
now covered by a handsome bathing establish- 
ment which adjoins a first-class hotel, the Vittorio 
Emanuele. For the Grotto is nothing else but 
a huge natural vapour-bath. It is a sovereign 
remedy for gout and rheumatism, especially, 
people say, for the former. The temperature 
ranges from 8o° F. at the entrance to 95 ° F. in the 



278 MONTECATINI 

nether regions, and this variation, coupled with 
the fact that it descends to a considerable depth, 
has suggested to the lively Italian imagination 
to divide the Grotto into three parts, Paradiso, 
Purgatorio, and Inferno. I could not help ob- 
serving as I entered that the Paradiso was 
empty, and that there were but few souls in 
the Purgatorio, while in the Inferno there was 
scarcely sitting room. The Inferno is an im- 
posing natural vault comfortably arranged with 
chairs and benches. It is paved with wooden 
boards and with the good intentions of count- 
less patients who have here forsworn forbidden 
meats and drinks. The whole Grotto is lit by 
electric light, which finely throws out the fan- 
tastic extravagancies of its myriad stalactites and 
stalagmites. Science, the physician in charge 
told me, cannot account satisfactorily for the 
heat in the Grotto ; it does not as might be 
thought proceed from its many hot springs, for 
the water in these is below the temperature of 
the air. The Grotto of Monsummano has at- 
tracted much attention in Germany. Unlike 
Montecatini, plenty of foreigners come here, 
excepting only Englishmen, which is strange 
considering the large legacy of gout which our 
three-bottle grandsires have left us. The treat- 
ment after an hour's perspiration is various : 
rheumatic patients are tucked away in blankets 
to perspire yet more ; others are played upon 



NO NEED OF VISITORS 279 

by the powerful douche or revel in a dip in the 
splendid plunge. A bath in the Grotto is, as 
will be seen, an agreeable and interesting variant 
to the daily round at Montecatini. 

The Baths of Montecatini are in no need of 
visitors. Some 40,000 people, nearly all of 
them Italians, come here every season, and 
there are days in July and August when it 
would be unwise to arrive without having first 
secured rooms. It is singular indeed that no 
foreigners come to this delightful place. In part, 
I suppose, it is not sufficiently well known, in 
part the summer heats of Italy strike terror into 
the hearts of Northerners, but I never yet met 
the Englishman who had tried Montecatini that 
did not go away with its praises on his lips, and 
its health-marks writ large on every lineament of 
his countenance. 



SOME TUSCAN STRONGHOLDS 

THE SPANISH PRAESIDIA 




Monte Argentario and Orbetello 



To face p. 28 



ORBETELLO 



SOME TUSCAN STRONGHOLDS: THE 
SPANISH PRAESIDIA 

In the present chapter I have to deal with a 

subject that is very difficult indeed to write about. 

I have to speak of history of the most complex 

order, a mere tissue of minute and most evasive 

detail ; of natural marvels such as nature offers 

no otherwhither ; of an industry that exists but 

here, and not elsewhere, in the Italian Peninsula ; 

of a people that by a fortuitous admixture of blood 

has no parallel to it in the Universe ; of a Saint 

of the Church who, born but six weeks before 

Voltaire, did yet revive in his person all the 

marvels of legendary Christianity ; of a Religious 

Order that, founded in the eighteenth century, 

resembles no other, and yet contains within itself 

all the essential elements of every Religious Order 

383 



284 THE SPANISH PRAESIDIA 

that had gone before it, and of every Religious 
Congregation that has come after it. In short, 
I have to speak of the Spanish Praesidia, what 
that State was, what its territories have become, 
what still may be seen there of its past glory 
and importance, what is doing there now in the 
days of its aggregation to Modern Italy. And 
all this in a chapter which must be brief, not 
in a volume which should be solid and well- 
reasoned and very detailed, as befits the serious 
treatment due to even the tiniest of the Italian 
States. 

Orbetello, the capital of this singular State, 
was very well known to the hungry traveller on 
the road to Rome. At Orbetello Station, the 
Rome express would wait twenty minutes, and 
there the traveller could have a hasty and not ill- 
cooked meal. But the restaurant car has come in 
since : there is no reason now for the Orbetello 
refreshment-room, and it has been closed and 
relegated in a reduced form to Grosseto, the 
capital of the Province — but so recently that this 
news may still be news to some few travellers. 

The natural situation of Orbetello is remarkable. 
I know of no other district in Italy that looks so 
singular upon the map. A glance at the map 
alone suffices to arouse all our curiosity, and of 
itself makes us desire to know something of this 
strange-looking corner of the earth. The station 
of Orbetello is situated at the base of a narrow 



ORBETELLO 285 

tongue of land, two miles in length and never 
more than half a mile in breadth, which shoots 
forth into a vast salt-water lake, and on the very 
tip of this tongue lies, closely packed, the town of 
Orbetello itself. To the north and to the south 
of the town, and forming the boundaries of this 
lake, run narrowest strips of sandbank, two great 
arms which connect Monte Argentario, once an 
island, with the mainland. I must be more pre- 
cise : the southern strip, called the Tombolo della 
Feniglia, has now a narrow canal — the canal of 
Ansedonia — cut in its continental base ; the north- 
ern strip, called the Tombolo della Gianella, has 
never been suffered to join the mountain, and 
through a narrow shallow channel, navigable only 
by row-boats, all the fish of the sea rush into the 
inland lake to become the easy prey of the fisher- 
man. Look again at the map and note that the 
Feniglia is broader than the Gianella. This 
is caused by the boisterous libeccio or south-west 
wind, which beats here in its full force and is for- 
ever casting up the sand of the sea, and likewise 
whirling clouds of the sand of the earth into the 
shallow bottom of the lake. The northern strip 
is inhabited and cultivated ; the southern strip a 
wilderness of sand. Another glance at the map : 
there is a straight line running through the middle 
of the lake from the town to the mountain. That 
is a fine road, three-quarters of a mile in length, 
called the diga, made by the Grand Duke 



286 THE SPANISH PRAESIDIA 

Leopold II. in 1842, and giving comfortable 
access from the mainland to the ocean mountain. 
Before that date the people of Orbetello used to 
go over to Monte Argentario by boat, seldom 
enough by the road on the Feniglia, for that was 
far from the town. 1 The great lake is of a super- 
ficies of about 10 square miles ; its average depth 
not more than 3 feet, and it is very full of fish. 
There are no restrictions upon fishing in the 
southern half; fishing in the northern half is 
reserved to the Municipality, which adds quite 
50,000 livres a year to the town revenues from 
this source. Much of the fishing is done at night- 
time, and by the primitive process of spearing. 
It is a pretty sight at night to see some threescore 
boats, each with a flaming brazier in the bows to 
attract the gullible fish, and it is exciting to watch 
the neat spearing of the expert fishermen. The 
lake abounds in capitoni, a fat tasty eel, which 
can be bought cheaply enough until Christmas is 
coming on ; then the capitoni can scarce be had 
for love or money, for no self-respecting Roman 
or Neapolitan passes the vigil of Christmas eve 
without eating of this fish, and the capitoni of the 
lake of Orbetello all go — sometimes in the tanks 
of sailing ships — to the markets of Rome and 
Naples. The two sides of the lake communicate 
with one another by little tunnels under the 
causeway. A good high-road runs round Monte 

1 The road is now almost buried under the sand. 



A HEALTHY TOWN 287 

Argentario as far as Porto Santo Stefano on the 
northern side, and as far as Port'Ercole on the 
southern. There is no road on the seaward side 
of the mountain, and only mountain paths over 
the mountain itself. Seawards, on the summit, is 
a modern fort, of which nothing is visible save the 
top of a slender conning-tower, from which the 
gunnery officer can deal death and destruction by 
mathematical rule. 

We are in the dreaded malarial Maremma, but 
the climate of Orbetello is sweet and healthy. 
The citizens of Grosseto flock here, and to Santo 
Stefano, and Port'Ercole, in the summer months, 
for their own city has become dangerous. It is 
easy to understand the salubrity of Santo Stefano 
and Port'Ercole, for they are far away out at 
sea; but Orbetello lies low in the midst of a 
shallow lake, and should be sufficiently malarial. 
Be that as it may, Orbetello is said to be healthier 
than either, and I certainly noticed a quality of 
salubrious softness in the air which I have never 
felt in any other part of Tuscany. The lake is 
growing shallower, and that will assuredly be- 
come a danger to the health of the town. The 
citizens are well aware that it should be deepened, 
but alas ! we are in Italy, worried by a financial 
problem, and where is the money to come from ? 
I would myself dredge the lake to a depth of 
seven feet all over, if I might, in return, have 
the fishing rights for seven years to come. 



288 THE SPANISH PRAESIDIA 

There is ^5000 a year to be made out of the 
Orbetello fisheries, well managed. The Muni- 
cipality make ^2000 a year out of half the lake, 
with but primitive and slender resources at their 
disposal. And if only the lake were dredged to 
take line-of-battle ships, and the Monte were pro- 
perly fortified, what a safe shelter, what a dread 
inexpugnable position it would become ! 

Everything about this singular place is singular 
and unique. One of its many unique features is 
that it contains the only Manganese Iron Ore 
Mine in Italy. The mine is situated about half 
a mile to the south of the diga, on the road to 
Port'Ercole. It is active, rich and productive, 
yields at least 30,000 tons in the year, employs 
250 men, and works night and day. What is 
singular, too, is that it is worked by Englishmen, 
the Messrs. Rae of Leghorn and London : there 
seems to be no corner of Italy which does not 
bear traces of English influence and English 
capital, but on Monte Argentario, so removed 
and remote does it seem from the busy world, 
English influence comes as something of a sur- 
prise. There are nine kilometres of tunnels in 
the mountain-side, and galleries many storeys 
high : the bowels of the earth are here all ready 
prepared for the comfortable inspection of the 
geologist, but the mine has been working for 
twenty-five years, and I learned with astonish- 
ment that not a single man of science had been 



A ROMAN FISH-PRESERVE 289 

near the place to study the secrets of the earth 
which have here so conveniently been laid bare 
for him. As the mine faces the shallow lake, 
loading there would be impossible even if there 
were a proper outlet to the sea, and the ore is 
taken round by a light railway to the Scalo di 
Santa Liberata in the Bay of Santo Stefano. 
Here it is transported by lighters to British 
ships, which lie out in the roadstead, safe behind 
the shelter of the lofty Monte Argentario. 

At Santa Liberata it is well to ask for the loan 
of a boat and go out into the sea, and see beneath 
the sea the huge remnants of what I take to have 
been a vast Roman piscina, once rising high 
above the water's edge. There are great walls 
01 masonry ten feet thick, marking out in well- 
defined spaces large enclosures or tanks. On 
the rocky coast are the elaborate ruins of arches 
—possibly the cellarage of a Roman villa ?— and 
several manifest aqueducts ; higher up the hill is 
a Roman reservoir. Signor Adolfo del Rosso, 
late Syndic of Orbetello, has endeavoured to 
reconstruct the place and explain its object. 1 
He considers that these tanks built into the sea 
were filled with fresh water from the mountain, 
and used for catching fish. The Muggine, he 
says, cannot be caught for stocking with a net ; 
if its scales are touched it soon dies. The 
Emperors insisted upon having Muggine at all 

1 In the Etruria Nuova of the 15th April 1900. 

T 



290 THE SPANISH PRAESIDIA 

times, and therefore stocks had somehow to be 
found and kept. Signor del Rosso opines that 
it was done on this wise : the Muggine is a great 
glutton of fresh water ; a strong jet of such water 
was shot from the tank through a hole below the 
sea-level ; it attracted the Muggine, who imme- 
diately followed up the fresh water track into the 
tanks, and could not get out again. Signor del 
Rosso may be quite right ; I know nothing what- 
soever about the matter ; I do but call attention 
to a spot that may be well worth the careful study 
of experts, for I doubt if there be similar ruins, 
equally well-preserved and complete, in any other 
part of Italy. 1 

The history of Orbetello and Monte Argen- 
tario is as curious, as fantastic, as surprising as 
any in the dazzling mosaic of historic States 
which went to make up the many-tinted whole 
of the Italian Peninsula. When the Republic of 
Siena came to an end in the middle of the six- 
teenth century it had a seaboard. This embraced 
the whole of the modern Province of Grosseto : 
Orbetello was one of its forts, and Telamone, 
Santo Stefano, and Port'Ercole were among its 
ports. Charles V. interfered in the affairs of the 
Republic, for it was a fief of the Holy Roman 
Empire. For disloyalty (and incompetence) he 
treated it as a lapsed fief, and gave it to his son 

1 I tried to photograph the ruined arches, but a choppy sea was 
against operations. 



HISTORICAL DETAILS 291 

Philip. In 1557, the astute Cosimo, Grand Duke 
of Tuscany, succeeded in obtaining from Philip, 
now King of Spain, the investiture of the Sienese 
State as a fief. But Philip II., who had a keen 
eye for the natural advantages of a place that 
lent itself to fortification, reserved to himself the 
littoral of the old Republic, embracing Orbetello, 
Telamone, Monte Argentario with Porto Santo 
Stefano and Port'Ercole, and the little island of 
Giannutri. From 1557 to 1713 this important 
corner of Italian soil remained a purely Spanish 
State, governed by a Spanish Governor and 
garrisoned by Spanish soldiery. Philip gave to 
it the name of the States of the Praesidia, or 
Reali Stati dei Presidii as it was called in Italian. 
And since I have said that its history is unique, 
look what differentiated it from every other State 
in the Peninsula. In Italy there were but two 
absolute sovereignties, the States of the Church 
and the Republic of Venice : all the other States 
were fiefs holding either from the Pope, the Em- 
peror, or the King of Spain. Philip II. himself 
held Naples and Sicily from the Pope ; the Re- 
publics of Genoa and Lucca, the Duke of Savoy 
and the Duke of Modena held from the Emperor ; 
the Grand Duke of Tuscany held Florence from 
the Emperor, Siena from the King of Spain, and 
Radicofani from the Pope. And so on through 
the whole list. But the State of the Spanish 
Praesidia was neither absolute sovereignty nor 



292 THE SPANISH PRAESIDIA 

fief: it was a possession of the House of the 
Spanish Hapsburgs, and there was no other 
corner of Italian soil which had a precisely simi- 
lar status. In 1738, when by the Treaty of 
Vienna Charles, the son of Philip V. of Spain, 
was recognised as King of the Two Sicilies, the 
Praesidia became an appanage of the Neapolitan 
King, but while he continued to hold his King- 
dom from the Pope, the Praesidia remained a 
possession of his House. From 171 3 to 1738 
the State had passed by Treaty to the Emperor, 
and was mainly garrisoned by Neapolitan and 
German soldiers. In 1801 it was added to the 
new Kingdom of Etruria, and not until 18 14 was 
it absorbed by the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. I 
must not forget to mention that in 1602 the 
Spanish King, Philip III., obtained Porto Lon- 
gone in the Island of Elba on the same terms, 
and it became part of the Stati dei Presidii, a 
fine shelter for the Spanish Fleet, and an import- 
ant base for operations in defence of the Spanish 
mainland possessions. 

Such, briefly outlined, are the dry bones of the 
history of this noteworthy State, but the dry 
bones become clothed with vividest realities ere 
you have been twenty-four hours in Orbetello. 
For on all sides of you Spanish memories and 
Spanish influences spring into life. Over the 
outer gate of the town stands the ecu complet of 
Spain, and an inscription of 1692 bearing the 



SPANISH MEMORIES 293 

name of Charles II., King of Spain, King of the 
Two Sicilies, King of all the Indies ; over the 
inner gate are the arms of the same monarch and 
another inscription (1697); the Spanish arms are 
on a solid Spanish powder-magazine just within 
the walls; the Spanish arms are over the Municipal 
building ; the former residence of the Governor is 
surmounted by a tower and wrought-ironwork of 
unmistakably Spanish craftsmanship ; the Church 
of San Francesco is full of epitaphs writ in pure 
Castilian ; half the archives of the Municipality 
are in the same language ; the very men and 
women have many of them a Spanish rather than 
an Italian cast. I came across Diaz de Palma, 
and Nunez (now writ Nugnes), and Sanchez (now 
spelled Sances), and Velasco which must assuredly 
have been Velasquez. Spain seemed to live in every 
corner, but that I could trace no Iberian corrup- 
tions in the very excellent Tuscan spoken by the 
natives. Orbetello from the land side — and who 
could get at it from the sea? 1 — was heavily fortified. 
The Spanish fortifications still survive in all their 
glory. These were the kind of fortifications 
that my Uncle Toby sat down before at Namur, 
where he got the wound in his groin ; these were 
the kind of fortifications that he and Corporal Trim 
set up in miniature in the bowling green. Stevinus 
has described them, and so has the Count de 

1 Seawards there are but some walls of polygonal Pelasgic 
masonry, much admired by the learned in such matters. 



294 THE SPANISH PRAESIDIA 

Pagan, and the Chevalier de Ville, and the 
Marshal Vauban. Here are the escarps and 
counterscarps, the horn-works and demi-bastions, 
the saps, mines, blinds, palisadoes, ravelins, half- 
moons, and "such trumpery," which filled my 
dear Uncle Toby's brains, and drew from my 
father, Mr. Walter Shandy, that hasty and unkind 
rebuke which lives and will forever live in the 
choicest pages of English pathos. The right- 
conditioned man is not long in Orbetello without 
communing with the shade of my Uncle Toby. 

Orbetello has, besides its fortifications, some 
few other objects of interest. The Collegiate 
Church of the Assumption is interesting, and its 
simple Gothic faQade, added to in baroque days, 
is rather striking. There are the Cyclopean walls 
and Spanish tower which I have mentioned. The 
traveller acquainted with Tuscan and Castilian, 
can pass some exciting hours at the Municipality 
in turning over the pages of the " Libro d'Oro," 
and studying the " statuti " of the old State. Note 
another peculiarity of Orbetello : it is in no diocese, 
but draws its spiritual jurisdiction direct from the 
Titular Abbot of the Tre Fontane at Rome. The 
population of the city is about 4000. 

Port'Ercole is well worth a visit. The Gothic 
entrance-gate is surmounted by a Spanish tower 
and ironwork, like the one at Orbetello. The 
Spanish arms which stood over the entrance have 
been removed to a neighbouring house. There 



A CONVICT PRISON 295 

are perhaps not more than 400 people in this once 
important strategical position ; they are busily- 
engaged in fishing, and have a fine sheltered 
harbour. High above the steeply-placed, crumb- 
ling old village is the Rocca, once a terror to the 
enemies of Spain, now a large convict prison. It is 
an interesting study as a bit of seventeenth-century 
fortification, and likewise as the model of a well- 
ordered modern prison. On the lofty hill at the 
opposite side of the bay stands Forte Filippo, yet 
another powerful fort, built by order of Philip II. 
of Spain. Between the cross-fire from these two 
deadly eminences, no enemy could ever hope to 
enter the harbour and live. Here, too, there are 
convicts, some eighty or ninety ; here, too, the 
order is perfect, and the contented cheerfulness 
quite surprising. I succeeded in obtaining leave 
from Rome to visit both establishments, and had 
the further good fortune of the personal chaperon- 
age of the kindly and courteous Director. The 
system is not cellular in these prisons: the convicts 
live in wards and seem very sociable, and yet 
thoroughly under discipline. As we entered, the 
ward sprang to attention and formed a double row. 
There were many fine handsome lads among 
them, and but few faces of the criminally vicious 
type. We were among so-called "political" 
prisoners here, and you might note the young 
visionary proud of his martyrdom, and the poor 
dupe long repented of his subversive deeds. Many 



296 THE SPANISH PRAESIDIA 

of them had been out in the May risings of 1898. 
How glad they seemed of this unlooked-for visit 
from the outside world, and how glad of a word 
from their kindly Director. 

"How old are you, my lad?" he would say to 
one of them. 

"Twenty-four, sir." 

" And how long have you got ? " 

"Twenty years, sir." 

" Try by good conduct to reduce your sen- 
tence." 

"God grant it, sir!" 

"And you, my boy, how old are you?" ad- 
dressing another. 

" Twenty, sir." 

" And how long are you in for? " 

"Twenty-two years, sir." 

"Ah! Try, like a good lad, by good conduct, 
to reduce your sentence." 

" I will indeed, sir ! " 

And so we walked down one melancholy line 
and up the other. It was a relief to be outside 
the grim donjon once more, and to look down 
into the bay where a flotilla of fishing-boats was 
bearing a freight of free Italian fishermen far out 
into the free and open sea. 1 

1 To folklorists : — I unearthed a curious custom at Port'Ercole, 
new to me. When a Port'Ercolese loses his mother-in-law, he lets 
his beard grow for forty days, but whether as a sign of mourning, 
or as evidence of newly acquired freedom, I could not well deter- 
mine. 



PORTO SANTO STEFANO 297 

The traveller should likewise not fail to visit 
Porto Santo Stefano on the other side of the 
mountain. It is quite a busy place of some 
4000 souls, and ever so picturesque. The deep 
marine blue of the fishermen's blouses set against 
the tawny and russet tints of the town, gives a 
charming effect of colour. Of course there is a 
big Spanish fort here, now deserted and falling 
to ruins. Anchovies caught about Gorgona are 
cured here, and I even noticed a French sardine 
factory. From Porto Santo Stefano a little 
packet-boat runs daily to and from the Island of 
Giglio, and a Rubattino boat leaves weekly for 
Leghorn, taking two days upon the voyage and 
touching at all the islands of the Tuscan Archi- 
pelago. It is an enchanting and most varied 
sea-trip. The boat stays overnight at Porto- 
ferraio in the Island of Elba, and gives time for 
an evening drive to Napoleon's country villa of 
San Martino. 

Telamone, at the extreme northern end of the 
Stati dei Presidii, is scarcely worth a visit. It is 
crumbling away, and the malaria here is very 
deadly. There are no longer any fisherfolk : the 
men work as charcoal-burners in the Maremma, 
and the charcoal is sent out in barges from 
Telamone to the sailing-ships lying in the bay. 
The vasty Spanish keep has been turned into a 
comfortable coastguard barrack. Of Spanish 
memories I could trace but one small inscription, 



2 9 8 THE SPANISH PRAESIDIA 

and a chalice in the sacristy of the Parish Church 
on the foot of which was engraven in Castilian, 
" De la Capilla del cuerpo de guardia." But the 
chalice put the presence of a Spanish occupation 
and a Spanish garrison beyond all doubt, and 
conjured up the daily devotions of the troops of 
his Catholic Majesty. The population of Tela- 
mone has shrunk away to about two hundred. 

Orbetello has been subjected to many sieges, 
but to one at least that is of the first order and 
takes rank in history. You cannot be long in 
the town without hearing of it, and you will rise 
in the estimation of the Orbetellani by knowing 
something about it. I therefore spare space for 
the briefest description. France and Spain were 
at war in 1646. The wily Mazarin determined 
upon a secret descent on the Spanish strongholds 
in Tuscany. A large fleet was secretly fitted out 
at Marseilles, and a force of 9000 men, both horse 
and foot, were embarked upon it. The general- 
issimo of the expedition was a very notable 
warrior : Thomas of Savoy, Prince of Carignan, 
ancestor in the direct line of King Humbert, 
and so potent was his military valour that he has 
transmitted physical pluck to each and all of his 
descendants. This French fleet arrived in the 
Bay of Santo Stefano on the 8th May 1646, and 
anchored about the middle of it. Prince Thomas 
immediately organised three shore parties : the 
central party made for the Spanish fort of Le 



A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY SIEGE 299 

Saline (consult the map), and the Spanish gar- 
rison of thirty fled in affright before the invaders ; 
Telamone surrendered after trifling bombard- 
ment ; Santo Stefano yielded next day. Observe 
the consequence : the littoral from Telamone to 
the northern arm of the lake was free for a 
leisurely disembarkment of the French forces. 
But Thomas, if prudent, was never leisurely, and 
by the 10th of May he was marching along the 
Aurelian Way, and invading the narrow tongue 
of land on the tip of which Orbetello is placed. 
The Governor of Orbetello, Carlo della Gatta, was 
likewise a warrior whom history should not forget. 
He was no Spaniard, but a Neapolitan, though, 
of course, a subject of his Catholic Majesty. 
And note, en passant, an instructive situation 
which could have occurred nowhere else save in 
much-divided Italy : Thomas, an Italian Prince, 
commanding a French army, found himself op- 
posed to della Gatta, an Italian soldier command- 
ing a Spanish garrison. Della Gatta had but 
three hundred troops in his stronghold, but the 
Orbetellani loved their Spanish masters who 
asked for next to no taxes, and who enrolled no 
soldiers that were not volunteers, and men, 
women, and children turned out to fight for the 
Spaniard. The resistance was heroic. Delia 
Gatta worked miracles and organised marvels. 
Nothing daunted him. He lost his son, poor 
man, shot down on the walls beside him, and the 



3oo THE SPANISH PRAESIDIA 

boy's epitaph is still very legible in the Church of 
San Francesco at Orbetello. 1 The French closed 
right up to the town ; they filled the lake on the 
other side with flat-bottomed boats armed with 
murderous little mortars ; they got upon the very 
walls in fierce hand-to-hand encounters. All was 
in vain : della Gatta beat them back again and 
again. They could not spare men and ships to 
blocade Port'Ercole, and through this source the 
Spanish commander received aid from the Vice- 
roy of Naples. At length the Spanish fleet ap- 
peared upon the scene, and on the 18th July 1646 
Prince Thomas was obliged to raise the siege, 
having sustained the first and only severe check 
which he had ever known in his warlike career. 
'Twas an heroic episode, but it needs to be told 
with ample and ungrudging detail. 2 
1 d. o. M. 

HOC JACET IN TUMULO 

JOSEPH CAROLI DE GATTA 

IMPERATORIS EXERCITUS 

HORUM PRAESIDIORUM ETRURIAE 

FILIUS 

QUI SIMUL CUM PATRE 

DEFENDENDUM ORBETELLUM 

AB OBSIDIONE FRANCORUM 

TORMENTI MURALIS GLOBO PERCUSSUS 

OBIIT 

AETATIS SUAE ANNO XVIII. 

PRIDIE KALENDIS JULII 

MDCXXXXVI. 

2 It has been told with generous detail by Dr. Alfonso Ademollo 
in his work " L'Assedio di Orbetello dell'anno 1646," Grosseto, 
1883, and with the help of a large map, the book becomes lively 
and absorbing to the last degree. 



ST. PAUL OF THE CROSS 301 

I have made no secret in this book of my liking 
for Religious and Religious Orders. I recommend 
every traveller, for his good, to cultivate a similar 
partiality, and to make for the nearest Convent, 
however remote the spot, however inaccessible 
the Conventual building. In a Convent he is 
sure to learn the local traditions, to improve his 
history, and to see interesting and curious things. 
And in a Convent he is also sure of a cheerful 
welcome, kindly entertainment, and the best hos- 
pitality that the place can afford. I confess that 
it was rather the fact that the Mother House of 
the Passionist Order is situated on one of the 
eminences of Monte Argentario, than any interest 
in Spanish fortifications, which first drew my foot- 
steps into the States of the Praesidia. 

The famous Passionist Order is of so recent 
institution, its saintly founder lived so near our 
own times, that we approach it with more than 
usual curiosity, for we see here the possibility of 
accurately following the genesis and growth of a 
Legend, of testing relics, and of verifying miracles. 
Paolo Francesco Danei, known to all the world 
as St. Paul of the Cross, was born on the 3rd 
January 1694 at Ovada, in the Republic of Genoa, 
and died at Rome on the 18th October 1775, only 
the other day, as it seems, when we are talking 
of a fully canonised Saint. In 1720 he had, in 
his native place, a vision — which he is careful to 
tell us was not a corporal vision, " ma in Dio " — 



302 THE SPANISH PRAESIDIA 

of the future Passionist habit, and he obtained 
the leave of his Bishop to wear this habit. In 
the same year he wrote the Rule of the future in- 
stitution, almost by inspiration it would seem, for 
he was not even a priest at the time, and had not 
a single follower save his younger brother Giovan 
Battista : humanly speaking such an Order seemed 
a dream of the impossible. In 1721 he set out 
by command of his Bishop for Rome, still with- 
out a follower, to submit his Rule to Innocent 
XIII., and on the sea voyage from Genoa to 
Civitavecchia his ship was becalmed for some 
days off Monte Argentario. He came ashore, 
and climbing up the rugged mountain to pray in 
secret, he was suddenly illuminated with the con- 
viction that he was destined by Almighty God to 
found here and not elsewhere the new Religious 
Order of his dreams. Here he and his brother 
Giovan Battista lived some years in a tumble- 
down hermit's cell, practising every austerity of 
the flesh, and cultivating every virtue of the spirit. 
It was not until 1727 that they were ordained 
priests : it was not until the following year that 
Paul had collected a few followers, all of whom 
fell away from him, discouraged by the severity 
of the life. And it was not until 1737 tnat tne 
present Retreat was finished, the Saint working 
at it with his own hands like a common mason. 
Paolo Danei encountered all the hostility, both of 
clergy and laity, which was the lot of the legen- 



THE PASSIONIST ORDER 303 

dary founders of Orders. And he had all the 
virtues, all the sanctity, sweetness, simplicity, 
patience, and steadfastness of the legendary Saint. 
He was beatified in 1852, and canonised in 1867. 
The eighteenth century has produced many holy 
persons, but as far as I know only three other 
canonised Saints : St. Leonard of Port Maurice, 
St. Alphonsus Liguori, and — greatest " Saint " 
of them all perhaps — the obscure mendicant St. 
Benedict Joseph Labre, in whose canonisation the 
Church has exalted the most abject poverty. 

" Passionist " is but a popular designation : the 
full style and title of the Order is : the Congre- 
gation of the Discalced Clerks of the Most Holy 
Cross and Passion of Jesus Christ. They have 
the essentials of all other Orders, and yet differ 
from all others to an extent that makes it impos- 
sible to classify them. They are neither Monks, 
nor Friars, nor Clerks Regular, nor a Religious 
Congregation. Unlike Monks, but like most 
Friars, they are discalced ; unlike both Monks 
and Friars, they are not tonsured ; like Monks 
and Friars, they say their Office in Choir, and 
individually may hold no property ; unlike Monks 
and Friars, they take simple and not solemn vows. 
Clerks Regular and Religious Congregations say 
their Office in private like secular priests ; the 
former take solemn vows and may hold no pro- 
perty, the latter simple vows, or no vows at all, 
and may own property in a restricted sense. 



3o 4 THE SPANISH PRAESIDIA 

Unlike any other Order, besides the usual three 
vows, the Passionist takes a fourth : to keep alive 
in the heart of man the Passion of the Lord Jesus 
Christ. St. Paul of the Cross has not only founded 
a new Religious Order ; he has instituted a new 
order of Religious. 

The life of the Passionists is very austere. 
They rise at midnight for Matins ; go barefoot ; 
fast three days a week and all Advent and Lent ; 
make a free use of the discipline and the cilicium ; 
and observe long silences. Their life is divided 
between action and contemplation ; they go forth 
into the world to give missions and retreats, to 
serve in prisons and hospitals, and return home 
again to prepare themselves in silence for further 
action. The Passionist habit is of a coarse black 
stuff, and consists of a tunic (not cassock) taken in 
at the waist by a black leathern girdle, and a black 
cloak worn out of doors and on public occasions. 
In Choir their headgear is the modern biretta ; 
out of doors the silk hat of a secular priest. But 
what distinguishes their habit from all others is 
the Passionist badge affixed to both tunic and 
mantle. It consists of a large heart cut out in 
white celluloid on a black ground, surmounted by 
a white Cross, and bearing in capital letters the 

words JESU XPl PASSIO, below which are 
three nails interlaced, the central nail in pale, the 
two others in saltire. This badge flashes and 
shines forth and stands out in quite a remarkable 



A LOVER OF ENGLAND 305 

manner, giving instant distinction to a Passionist, 
and compelling one to identify him a mile away. 
The lay brothers are dressed exactly like the 
Fathers, save that they do not wear the biretta, 
and bear the badge on the tunic only, not on the 
cloak. The head of a Passionist house is a Rector, 
not a Prior, or a Superior, or a Guardian. The 
house itself is called a Retreat, not a Monastery, 
or a Convent, or a Friary. The Passionists 
usually build their Retreats on hills : most Lon- 
doners are familiar with the great dome of St. 
Joseph's Retreat, the Passionist House on High- 
gate Hill. 

Simplicity was one of Paul Danei's chief 
characteristics, simplicity and the Faith that moves 
mountains. His simplicity was shown in nothing 
so much as in his love of the distant, nebulous, 
heretical realm of Great Britain. He had never 
set foot outside Italy ; I doubt if he had ever 
spoken to an Englishman ; I doubt if reading or 
study or other definable circumstance had anything 
to do with it — but certain it is that his mind was 
full of England, and the desire for her conversion 
was the great desire of his life. " Ah ! I'lnghil- 
terra, I ' Inghilterra ! preghiamo per I ' Inghilierra ! " 
was an expression ever on his lips. He could not 
kneel down to pray without England getting into 
his thoughts. He remembered England every 
day in saying Mass ; he stirred up others to pray 
for England. But his action was limited to 

u 



306 THE SPANISH PRAESIDIA 

prayer : lasciamo fare a Dz'o, he used always to 
say when his sons spoke to him of the conversion 
of England. 

One day, after having celebrated Mass, he was 
unusually bright and happy. "Oh, what have I seen 
this morning ! " he said to the Fathers about him ; 
"my Religious in England." And it proved to 
be no lying vision. The thought of England had 
almost died out of his Order at the end of the 
century, but his love for England was revived in 
one of his spiritual descendants, Father Dominic 
of the Mother of God (1792- 1849), humblest and 
simplest of men, the son of poor peasants of the 
Patrimony, who, after unheard-of difficulties and 
most pathetic struggles with the rebellious English 
tongue, came among us in 1841, founded a Pas- 
sionist Retreat at Aston Hall, and by his sanctity 
and moving simplicity, attracted some of the great 
minds among the Tractarians, receiving into the 
Church such men as Newman 1 and Dalgairns, 
and clothing many more with the habit, as, for 
instance, George Ignatius Spencer of the noble 
house of Spencer, a future Provincial of the English 

1 « Littlemore, October Zth, 1845. — I am this night expecting 
Father Dominic, the Passionist, who, from his youth, has been led 
to have distinct and direct thoughts, first of the countries 
of the North, then of England. After thirty years' (almost) 
waiting, he was without his own act sent here. ... He 
is a simple holy man ; and withal gifted with remarkable 
powers. He does not know of my intention ; but I mean to ask of 
him admission into the One Fold of Christ." — "Apologia pro Vita 
Sua" (London, 1873, P- 2 34)- 



A LATTER-DAY SAINT 307 

Passionists. The Congregation has now four 
Retreats in England,, two in Ireland, one in Scot- 
land, and six in the United States : to the 
Passionists themselves, who are familiarly ac- 
quainted with the loving sayings of their simple 
founder regarding the English, it may be easily 
imagined how deeply significant and touching is 
this fact. The Order can, moreover, boast of the 
latest Servant of God raised to the Altars of the 
Church. This was a young student of theirs, 
Gabriele dell' Addolorata, who died so recently as 
1862, and has already authoritatively been pro- 
claimed the Venerable. Of his life there is noth- 
ing to relate save that it was hid with Christ in 
God. That is the note of the modern sanctity. 
The bulk of the Christian world is becoming like 
the ancient Pagan world, pleasure-loving, unbe- 
lieving, frankly sinful ; the modern with a high 
religious aim fears many of those who bear his 
name as much as the early Christians feared those 
of the household of Domitian. He has no con- 
venient catacombs in which to hide his saintly 
aims : Christ is his all-sufficient Catacomb, and 
hence the very spiritual quality of modern 
saintliness. I possess the santino of the Vener- 
able Gabriel now in use among the Faithful. If 
it is a fancy picture, it is a vera effigies. A verit- 
able Passion Flower he seems with that sweet 
face and drooping form, and the whole picture 
eloquently preaches what I have here but faintly 



3 o8 THE SPANISH PRAESIDIA 

indicated concerning the peculiar characteristics of 
the modern Saint. Queen Margaret of Italy has 
a great devotion to the Venerable Gabriel, of 
whom she possesses some relics. 

It is a steep climb to the Retreat on Monte 
Argentario (noo ft), and it is a long hot walk 
from Orbetello to the base of the mountain. But 
one can drive to the ascent, and arrange for mules 
and donkeys to do the rest. On the occasion of 
my first ascent — a day of premature heat in early 
June — I noticed that St. Paul had not done for 
his mountain what St. Patrick did for his island : 
a number of comfortable, sleepy, repellent — but 
quite harmless — snakes dragged their slow lengths 
up the banks and crashed into the underwood at 
my coming. 'Tis a lovely walk, and ever such an 
aromatic mountain : drawn forth by the heat of 
the benignant sun, the sweet and pungent odours 
of myrtle, rosemary, wild thyme, and wormwood 
fill the whole air and refresh the jaded senses. 
But I was not sorry to reach my destination, and 
ere knocking at the door of the Retreat, I drank 
deep at the cool fountain which lies over against 
it. So keen was my thirst, so exquisite the re- 
freshment, that I recalled without any wonder that 
this must be that very miraculous fountain of 
which I had read in the modern Legend, sprung 
from the earth at the prayer of Giovan Battista, 
the holy founder's holy brother. 



A CONVENT WELCOME 309 

The door was opened to me by a lay brother. 
He started back in delight at the sight of a 
stranger : " Passi, passi — venga, venga ! " he cried 
in a sort of rapture of pleasure, leading the way 
down the long corridor. I was shown into a 
bare little reception-room, lined with hard straw- 
bottomed chairs, its walls covered with a few 
rude prints and lithographs of Passionist Generals 
and Servants of God. A charming old Religious 
presently appeared, followed by the same lay 
brother bearing a decanter of wine and a caraffe 
of the miraculous water. 

" Welcome ! " cried the old man, " welcome to 
Monte Argentario ! Welcome to our modest 
Retreat ! You will rest and eat with us, I 
hope ? " 

I am an old hand in the exploration of con- 
vents, and had gone up before the dinner-hour 
in the calm assurance of receiving this invitation. 
"You are very good, Father," I replied, "I will 
most willingly rest with you." 

" But first you must refresh yourself," he said, 
with his hand upon the decanter. 

" I have already refreshed myself at the spring," 
said I. 

" That was imprudent," he answered with con- 
cern. "It is dangerous to drink freely of water 
when one has made so great a perspiration 
[sudatd) as you have." 

" But if 'tis miraculous — " I hazarded. 



310 THE SPANISH PRAESIDIA 

His eyes twinkled with no sort of annoyance 
or reproof, and immediately it rushed into my 
mind that I had somewhere read that a man has 
no firm faith in his religion until he is able to 
laugh about it. 

" Modico vino ut ere propter stomachtim tuum" 
(" Use a little wine for thy stomach's sake "), he re- 
joined good-naturedly, quoting another Paul much 
greater than the Paul of Monte Argentario. 

I did as I was bid, and then he took me into 
the church and showed me letters and pictures 
and relics of the founder ; he took me into the 
library and let me turn over the books ; he took 
me out into the orchard and the woods and 
showed me different favourite spots where Paul 
Danei used to pray and meditate and chastise 
his flesh little more than a hundred years ago. 
And he took me all the way up to the Novitiate, 
quite a mile higher up the hill, where I could 
look down upon the russet town of Orbetello, 
shot forth upon its tongue of fertile land into 
the middle of the lake, and the two strange 
fantastic strips of sandy soil that embraced and 
circumscribed the vast expanse of smooth still 
water. 

" You are no Italian, sir ? " he had asked of me 
dubiously. 

"No, reverend father; I am an Englishman." 

Englishman ! Inglese ! That is always an 
additional recommendation where a Passionist 



IN THE REFECTORY 311 

is concerned. " I am heartily glad of it ! " he 
exclaimed with fervour and some little admira- 
tion. 

I begged that I might be allowed to eat with 
the Community in the Refectory, and I begged 
that they would make no difference on my 
account. My first request was granted, but as 
to the second — well, they laid a table-cover for 
me while they themselves ate off the bare boards ; 
they gave me a tumbler to drink out of while 
they used mugs of commonest crockery ; I was 
served with tasty dishes of which they tasted 
not ; and with my dessert of cherries, medlars, 
raw peas, and strawberries tied up with their 
leaves in the shape of a nosegay, I was treated 
to a strong red wine which did not go the round 
of the long tables. There is strict silence in the 
Refectory save for the reading aloud ; and in the 
observance of this silence, at least, I was allowed 
to imitate the Community. In other Refectories 
where I have eaten, a novice or a father reads 
aloud from a pulpit, and eats his own meal in 
peace after the rest have done. Not so with the 
Passionists. The student at the end of the table 
begins the reading of a book, and reads until the 
Father Rector rings a bell, when the book is 
passed on to the next in order, who will be in 
the middle of his plate of rice, and so it comes 
down the long line, interrupting the reader in his 
meal, nay often at the very moment of a con- 



312 THE SPANISH PRAESIDIA 

templated mouthful. I remarked upon this after- 
wards in recreation, and said that it struck me as 
a much severer penance than with other Orders, 
where the reader ate at peace and leisure after 
the reading was over. "Nay, nay — ma no, ma no" 
came the gentle answer, "for the poor wretch 
{il poveretto) probably gets his food cold." So 
difficult it is to make Italian Religious under- 
stand the sublimities of their own life, or how 
great their sacrifice, or how humiliating to us 
worldlings their noble example ; they themselves, 
for all their supernatural aims, are the most 
natural and simple beings in the universe. And 
yet I have read in the newspapers that they are 
engaged in a "plot"! The only "plot" of 
theirs, and all their "machinations," consists in 
a holy scheme, ancient as the Church itself, to 
beguile men into those paths of morality which 
of themselves lead to the supreme and final 
Good. 

I was admitted to their hour's recreation after 
dinner, and we sat together in the common room, 
I talking about the Order and plying them with 
questions about the local traditions, they busily 
making Rosaries and, in turn, questioning me 
eagerly about " Inghilterra " and "gl'Inglesi," 
and the progress that the Faith was making in 
the former Isle of Saints. 

A bell announced that recreation was over and 
that silence had come again upon the Community 



THE FAITH THAT ENDURES 313 

until eventide. I rose to go, and bid an affec- 
tionate farewell to my gentle, kindly, generous 
hosts. They had given me food for the body, 
and, unwittingly, much food for the mind, as I 
descended the steep slopes of the mountain side. 
The Etruscans had been here ; the Romans ; the 
Goths and the Vandals ; feudal lords of the 
Empire, too, and Abbots in commendam. The 
Republic of Siena had been here ; the Spanish 
Monarchy ; the House of Hapsburg ; the King- 
dom of the Two Sicilies ; the short-lived King- 
dom of Etruria ; the French Empire ; the Grand 
Duchy of Tuscany. All these had been here ; 
all these had faded away like the baseless fabric 
of a vision. But the strenuous work of a simple 
man of God, bent above all things upon alleviat- 
ing the lot of his fellows, anxious in all things to 
make plain the mysterious ways of God with the 
children of men, that remained, that flourished, 
that was vigorous as when it first began, that 
would remain, in one form or another, while yet 
other States, yet other Governments, crumbled 
into dust by the side of it. For Faith was not 
dead, nor Sanctity — I had just seen that with 
my own eyes — and, together, Faith and Sanc- 
tity would continue to engender Love which 
makes possible the Life that is, and Hope which 
makes paramount the Life to come. Faith and 
Sanctity, together — But a truce to meditations. 
I had crossed the long causeway, and was already 



3 i4 THE SPANISH PRAESIDIA 

in the town. I was a traveller in a hurry to 
catch the express northwards, and in haste I 
made ready for the long night journey. But I 
vowed, then and there, God willing, that it 
should not be long ere I returned to study His- 
tory in the old States of the Praesidia, and Reli- 
gion in the quiet Retreat of the Discalced Clerks 
of the Most Holy Cross and Passion of the 
Redeemer. 



A TUSCAN GAME: 

PALLONE 



A TUSCAN GAME: PALLONE 

What Englishman, what sport-loving foreigner, 
is there who, after a brief residence in Italy, does 
not lose his head over the Italian national game 
of Pallone ? It is as exciting as cricket, a good 
deal older, ten thousand times more aesthetic, 
and it takes up but two hours of your time when 
business for the day is over, instead of three 
whole days when the business of the day is left 
to shift for itself. It is strange that Pallone 
should never have been played before an English 
public ; strange, too, that the English athlete, 
who knows the ins and outs of base-ball, the 
niceties of French and Italian fencing, the points 
of all foreign wrestling, the rules even of the 
Spanish bull-ring, should never so much as have 
heard of Pallone. The only parallel to it in 
nescience is the blank, hopeless, childlike igno- 
rance of the Italian on the subject of cricket. 
And the Italian is less excusable than the Eng- 
lishman, for in some of the Italian ports eleven 
sons of Albion from the ages of fifteen to sixty- 
five have been known to challenge on Italian soil 
an eleven of the Royal Navy or the Mercantile 



3i8 



PALLONE 



Marine, while Pallone requires a large and speci- 
ally constructed court which no Italian would 
lightly think of setting up in Liverpool or 
London. 

But to try and describe the game. Pallone 
is played upon a mud Court 312 feet long and 
53 feet wide, a goodly area, as will be seen. On 
one side of the Court rises a wooden or stone 
wall some 50 feet in height. On the other side, 




THE BRACCIALE AND BALL 



and at either end, stand or sit the excited spec- 
tators. The Court is divided in the centre by 
a line. The players are usually six in number, 
three on one side and three on the other. And 
there is also the modest little mandarino, the 
sender or server. One of the three players is 
il battitore (the striker) ; the second spalla 
(shoulder), who stands, as it were, at the shoulder 
of the striker and backs him up when the ball is 



THE GAME 319 

in motion ; and the third is il terzino, who plays 
forward. Each player has on his hand a curious 
instrument, which, at first sight, looks like nothing 
so much as a huge pine-cone. This is the 
br acciale with which he strikes the ball. It is 
made of walnut wood, and studded at regular 
intervals with wooden spikes, but that part of it 
which strikes the ball is made of the extremely 
tough wood of the Cornelian cherry. The centre 
of it is hollow, and into this the player inserts 
his hand, which grasps a comfortably-shaped 
cross-piece at the bottom. The bracciale weighs 
a good 4! lbs. avoirdupois. It is about 8 inches 
in length, and has, owing to the projection of 
the spikes, a circumference of quite 24 inches. 
The " drive " which it produces is surprising. 
The ball is of stout leather, distended by pneu- 
matic pressure ; it weighs 1 2 ounces, has about 
15 inches circumference, and is capable of doing 
grievous bodily harm. 

The set consists of any number of games pre- 
viously determined upon. Each side receives 
the service for two consecutive games, which 
together are styled a trappolino. But it is not 
one side which serves to the other. The battitore, 
or striker-off, stands upon an inclined spring- 
board at his end of the Court ; the mandarine- , 
or server, stands some twenty yards in front of 
him, and sends him a gentle lob, which the batti- 
tore receives and strikes as he rushes down, full 



320 PALLONE 

tilt, from his point of vantage. The server skips 
out of the way, or lies down flat if he sets par- 
ticular store upon his life, and the ball flies 
whizzing into the opposite Court. Then much 
the same rules and much the same tactics follow 
(though on a grandiose scale) as in our Lilli- 
putian lawn-tennis. A point is lost in the same 
way, and a point is gained in the same way, save 
that if the ball drops outside or beyond the Court 
at either end, that counts to the side that sent it, 
for it needs a real tour de force to drive the ball 
so great a distance. I have seen Gabri, a famous 
Piedmontese battitore, send the ball served to 
him clean beyond the Court three times in suc- 
cession, amid yells and bravos of which Tuscan 
throats alone are capable. But if the ball goes 
out of the Court, either on the right-hand side of 
the Court or the left-hand — that is, either among 
the spectators in the third-class places, or over 
the high wall opposite them, that counts against 
the side which sent it. The first point is 15, the 
second 30, the third 40, the fourth game ; there 
is no deuce or vantage. 

But besides the giant and virile proportions of 
the game, there is another feature wholly unlike 
the tactics of lawn-tennis. The ball may strike 
the great wall as often as it chooses without dis- 
qualifying the stroke ; and sometimes the cun- 
ningest and most maddening play is done close 
up to the wall with the ball creeping insidiously 



A VARIANT OF THE GAME 321 

along it from Court to Court. Sometimes the 
forward player, for instance, will strike the ball 
against the wall, whence it rebounds at an angle 
at which only the nimblest adversary can hope to 
take it. In Pallone, all the science of "placing" 
consists in a right calculation of the force and 
extent of angles. Most surprising, most tan- 
talising, wildly exciting, are the results of some 
of this fierce play against the wall. 

There is yet another variant of the game. In 
place of the line drawn across the Court, a narrow 
strip of net is raised some 10 feet above the 
ground, and over this the balls have to go. The 
netting is covered with little bells which ring out 
tunefully if the ball touches it, for, unlike lawn- 
tennis, the stroke is against you if you do not 
completely clear the net. The Italians on the 
whole prefer this game. It keeps the ball high, 
allows of long and exciting rallies, and prevents 
" Whitechapel " (bruciare), or the short low 
stroke which admits of the ball being sent just 
over the line in a manner in which it can rarely 
be taken in so huge a Court. 

The players are dressed all in white ; a loose 
white frilled jacket, which resembles a garment 
that may be seen on English clothes-lines, and 
is, I believe, called a petticoat body ; white frilled 
knee-breeches, white cotton stockings, and white 
canvas shoes — a far more picturesque and ser- 
viceable get-up than our heavier yellowey-white 

x 



322 PALLONE 

flannels. Flowing from beneath the jacket hang 
the two ends of a sash which is either red or 
blue, for the two sides are always known as the 
Rossi and the Celesti, the Reds and the Blues. 
The mandarino, too, is dressed in white, but his 
jacket is tight-fitting, and his trousers are not 
knee-breeches. One other figure, he also a 
white one, stands in the Court by the dividing 
line, the scorer and umpire, who trills out in a 
musical sing-song the position of the game after 
every stroke, e.g. Trenta Celesti e niente Rossi ! — 
Blues thirty, Reds love ! Nor must I forget 
another important functionary, bronzed and burly 
as a rule, il Gonjiatore, whose business it is to 
inflate and reinflate the balls during play, and 
see that the server is served only with such as 
are sound and in good condition. 

The players in a public match are almost 
always professionals. They are not poorly paid 
as pay goes in Italy. A good battitore will get 
as much as 500 livres a month, and terzino 350. 
It is true that the professional cricketer would 
have to renounce sport on such terms, but sim- 
plicity and unpretentiousness are still Italian 
characteristics. Famous among living players 
are Mazzoni (Tuscan), a squarely-built sturdy 
athlete, who would certainly be champion if there 
were a championship ; Gabri (Piedmontese), 
brown, and very handsome, with his twinkling 
eyes and boyish geniality, whose smile gets more 



AN APPRECIATIVE AUDIENCE 323 

childlike as his stroke gets more demoniacal ; 
Pettinari of the Marches, a crafty left-handed 
player, staid and philosophical in his bearing, 
whose unruffled calm adds to the surprise of 
his insidious strokes ; Beppe Banchini, Franchi, 
Nidiaci, Silli, Bessi, Moggi, Marini, Tuscans all 
of them, and all full of renown ; and greatest of 
all, perhaps, both living and dead, Domenico 
Bossotto of Cuneo, now long past play, but 
still doing work as Director of the game at 
Turin. 

To the habitual observer the public is almost 
as diverting as the game itself. At either end of 
the Court, both dangerous positions, are the 
second-class places (admission 50 centimes, or 
3fd.). Opposite the great wall, stretching the 
whole length of the Court, are three terraces — 
the third-class places — where stand in rapt ecstasy 
xhepoftolo (admission 30 centimes, or 2|d.). There 
you will recognise your cabman, your barber, the 
waiter of the restaurant where you lunch, your 
postman, your butcher's boy and your baker's 
boy, your boatman and your favourite beggar : 
all doff their caps to you with a genial grin in 
commendation of the foreign gentleman who ap- 
preciates their national game. Above the second- 
class places (usually only at one end of the Court), 
rises the loggia of the first-class places (admission 
one whole livre, or y^d. at the present rate of ex- 
change) where sit, securely protected by wire- 



324 PALLONE 

netting, the signori, their mothers, their wives, 
their nursemaids and small children. Do not keep 
your face too near the wire protection, or at least 
keep your eyes open: one of Gabri's "demon" 
drives will force in the netting a good twelve 
inches and deprive you of eyesight forever. But 
fairly secure behind the wire-netting, you may 
watch and enjoy the discomfiture of the good- 
natured/^/^ when the ball gets wild and flies 
among them : there is no time for them to dream 
of Socialist ideals, or to think of the iniquities of 
Municipality, or the faithlessness of sweethearts : 
all their attention is needed to fly before the false 
stroke that sends a ball whizzing into their midst. 
Even when the ball flies over their heads and 
strikes the wall behind them, there is no saying 
at what angle it will return among them. But a 
ball which rebounds and knocks off a hat or two, 
or bruises a pair of sturdy shoulders, is only 
matter for chaff and hilarity, and the injured, 
with Tuscan good-humour, are loudest of all in 
the general delight caused by their discomfiture. 
Death has resulted from blows received at Pal- 
lone, and cases of serious injury (especially to the 
poor players) are not infrequent. If the statistics 
of casualties are favourable when compared with 
football, . they are at least evidence sufficient to 
show that the game has that element of danger 
required in all true sport. In many parts of Italy, 
however, the whole of the audience is protected 



INNOCENT GAMBLING 325 

from the vagaries of the ball, and certainly no 
Italian impresario would dream of setting up Pal- 
lone in London without properly sheltering the 
whole of his British audience. 

Great zest is added to the game by innocent 
and unpretentious betting. One does not wager 
on the side that will win, but on that man among 
the six players who shall make the most points. 
The system adopted is that of the Totalizzatore, 
or "pari mutuel" as it is called in France. All 
the money collected is divided equally among 
those who have backed the winning player, less 
ten per cent, which the totalizzatore keeps as his 
commission. So you have the comfort of know- 
ing, if you lose, that ninety per cent, of your 
stake does not go into the pockets of a ravening 
bookie, but may be shared in by your lawyer, 
your doctor, your water-carrier, and your favourite 
beggar. Supposing 700 one-franc tickets to have 
been wagered on a set, distributed as follows : — 



Blue Battitore, 150, 


less 


10 per 


cent. 


J 35 


„ Spalla, no 




>j 




99 


„ Terzino, 90 




j> 




81 


Red Battitore, 130 




>j 




117 


„ Spalla, 100 




>» 




90 


„ Terzino, 120 




>> 




108 



700 „ . 630 „ 

And supposing Blue Terzino makes the greatest 
number of points, then there remain 630 francs 
to be equally divided among the ninety people 



326 PALLONE 

who have backed him, and each receives seven 
francs. The system is simplicity and fairness 
itself, and is not without its charms. Of course 
any one person may take as many tickets on the 
same player as he chooses. 

A careful note is kept of the points made by 
each individual player, and they are publicly 
scored as the game proceeds. Look at this re- 
presentation of the scoring-board. It is divided 
into two parts, the left half facing you is red, the 
other half, blue. Of the four figures on the 
extreme outside, the upper two indicate the 
number of services received by each side — Reds 
one, Blues two — (remember that each service 
consists of two games), the lower and bigger 
figures that the Reds have won two games, and 
the Blues three. Of the remaining twelve figures, 
the upper line with the larger figures shows the 
number of points made by Battitore, Spalla, and 
Terzino of either colour respectively, the lower line 
or smaller figures indicating the number of faults 
or failures each player has made, for if two players 
should leave off equal in points, then the winner 
of the two is he who has the fewest faults against 
his name. This wagering on individuals who 
really form part of two opposing sides is perhaps 
a trifle unsportsmanlike, but it extends the pos- 
sibilities of the betting, works well, and somewhat 
softens the asperities of excessive party feeling. 

A very charming game, then, is this Italian 




THE SCORING-BOARD. 



A FORMIDABLE TRIO 327 

national game of Pallone. Into its history and 
antiquity I forbear to go. The origin of the 
game is lost in obscurity ; the hackneyed phrase, 
as it happens, literally tells the truth about it, and 
does not serve as an excuse for shirking research. 
One must read Greek and Latin to study the 
origin and first beginnings of the game. Quite 
a recent treatise on it is that of Messer Antonio 
Scaino, printed at Venice in 1560 ; the last notable 
book on the subject is " Gli Azzurri e i Rossi " 
(Turin, 1897), by a novelist famous here, and 
well known in England, Edmondo de Amicis. 
Nor can I now spare space to sing the prowess 
of past worthies. But one of them I must at 
least just mention, for I have been fortunate 
enough to secure a very striking portrait of him, 
a delicate line engraving, which brings out clearly 
all the frills and furbelows of the costume sixty 
years ago. This is Angelo Donati, whom very 
old Tuscan gentlemen can still remember, and 
still speak of with bated breath. He as Battitore, 
his brother as Spalla, and his son as Terzino 
made up the most formidable trio the game has 
ever witnessed. Angelo, from his demon stroke, 
was known as il Diavolone or the very devil, his 
brother as il Diavoletto or the devil of a fellow, 
and his son as il Diavolino or the little devil. 
Those were the palmy days of the game, when 
athletes were of more account than patriots and 
politicians. 



328 PALLONE 

Pallone has a fine flavour of antiquity about its 
appearance and mise en scene. The bronzed 
muscular players with their slight white 
picturesque costumes, the dense excited crowd, 
half-squatting, half-sitting, half-standing, the 
brilliant sun, the blue sky, the huge arena, 
recall without any effort of the imagination a 
Roman amphitheatre. The game (alas !) is on 
the decline. Time was when Royalty, on its 
visits to a favoured city, was always entertained 
with a gala game of Pallone, and authentic 
history has it that in the year 1814 King Fer- 
dinand of the Two Sicilies and British Vice- 
Consul Thomas Watson played a set on opposite 
sides in the great piazza of Livorno. But 
Royalty has heavier duties nowadays, and the 
burden of civilisation leaves the people little 
time and less money for innocent pastimes. 

The English traveller in Italy would do well 
to leave for a while churches and picture-galleries 
and seek out a Pallone Court. He will not be 
disappointed, and will certainly come again. 
And I think I have a piece of good news for all 
English lovers of athletic sports. I know that 
with a little encouragement more than one 
impresario would be ready to set up a Pallone 
Court in London, and provide London audiences 
with the best of living players. Our Italian 
brother athletes would be heartily welcome, and 
may rest assured of that loyal and vigorous sup- 



A PLEA FOR THE TOTALIZZATORE 329 

port which Englishmen as a nation are ever 
ready to accord to all forms of manly and healthy 



exercise. 



Post scriptum. — It is to be hoped that a Pallone 
Court is not a " place " within the meaning of the 
Act, and that the harmless necessary totalizzatore 
will be allowed to discharge his functions un 
molested. 



TUSCAN GAMBLING: 
THE STATE LOTTERY 



TUSCAN GAMBLING: THE STATE 
LOTTERY 

At four o'clock of every Saturday afternoon a 

sight may be seen in eight important Italian 

cities, which has no counterpart in any of the 

cities of England. This is the public drawing 

of the Regio Lotto, or State Lottery. The 

Lotto plays an important part in Italy. It is 

important to the State, which derives a net 

revenue of never less than ;£ 1,000,000 sterling 

from it, and it is important to a people born 

gamblers, as are all imaginative races, who, with 

this safety-valve of mild authorised gambling 

always at hand, are, on the whole, restrained 

from worse excesses. 

The Regio Lotto, though simple in itself, is 

not easy of explanation, nor are the dry bones 

of its system susceptible of literary vivification. 

Let our glance at the system, therefore, be very 

brief. In eight cities — to wit, Bari in Apulia, 

Florence, Milan, Naples, Palermo, Rome, Turin, 

and Venice, five numbers are drawn out of the 

numbers 1 to 90 inclusive, at four o'clock of 

every Saturday. The drawing is done in this 

333 



334 THE STATE LOTTERY 

wise, leastways at Florence, where I saw it. A 
commission, consisting of the Prefect of the 
Province, the Mayor of the city (or more usually 
their duly authorised representatives), and the 
local Director of the Lotto, take their places 
in a large open loggia fronting a piazza accessible 
to the public. There the numbers are publicly 
placed, one by one, in a revolving wire-receptacle, 
shaped like a huge pumpkin. The numbers are 
mounted on cloth, divided so as to fold into a 
small space. Each number is first, held up to 
the crowd below by an attendant, it is then 
folded by the Director of the Lotto and handed 
to the Prefect's representative, who places it in 
a hollow metal ball which shuts with a spring. 
He hands each ball to a boy who places it in the 
pumpkin-shaped receptacle. This boy is the 
instrument chosen by Dame Fortune to draw 
the numbers, and he is an object of veneration 
with the crowd. He comes from some orphan- 
age, and is a new boy every week. He is 
dressed in white to symbolise his own innocence 
and the guilelessness of the proceedings in which 
he is engaged. The law allots him a fee of twenty 
lire for his services, but that, of course, goes to 
his orphanage. After each series of ten numbers 
has been placed in the wire -receptacle, it is 
locked and revolved several times so as to mix 
up the numbers thoroughly. 

When the whole ninety numbers have been 



FATE AND THE ORPHAN BOY 335 

put in, the orphan boy is blindfolded, his sleeve 
is rolled up, he dives his arm into the slender 
aperture of the receptacle, and produces one of 
the metal balls. This is solemnly opened by the 
Prefect or his representative, the number is called 
out and held up to the crowd, and is then posted 
up at the back of the loggia after the manner of 
figures on a scoring-board. The remaining four 
numbers are drawn in the same way, and posted 
up in the order in which they are drawn. Then 
the small crowd melts away, usually with a look 
of disappointment on all faces, the Prefect's and 
the Mayor's representative receive the fee of 
twenty lire accorded them by law, the orphan 
boy is paid for the benefit of his orphanage, and 
the Director bustles off to telegraph the result of 
his drawing to the seven other drawing centres. 
By eight in the evening all Italy knows through 
the evening papers how it stands in the eight 
extractions. To prevent any possibility of mis- 
take each number is repeated three times in the 
telegram, first in figures, then in writing, and 
then by code-word ; thus : 79, seventy-nine, 
Siena (code-word for seventy-nine). If the 
three do not perfectly agree the receiving office 
requests the message to be repeated. On Satur- 
day after five the printing-presses of the eight 
drawing centres are busy printing the results of 
the eight drawings which they have learned by 
telegram, and by Sunday morning all the Lotto 



336 THE STATE LOTTERY 

offices in the kingdom are placarded with printed 
notices of the results. The following, as a speci- 
men, was the drawing for Saturday the i8th 
November 1899 :— 



Bari 


. 12 


42 


73 


53 


67 


Florence 


69 


80 


82 


63 


33 


Milan . 


54 


73 


43 


3 


64 


Naples . 


79 


68 


2 3 


55 


65 


Palermo 


74 


3 2 


90 


3 


7 


Rome . 


39 


19 


5i 


38 


89 


Turin . 


14 


89 


88 


37 


55 


Venice . 


43 


87 


Si 


49 


89 



And now as to the manner of winning — and 
losing. In every Italian town of importance 
there are a number of Lotto offices, where during 
the week a brisk business is done in the sale of 
tickets for the Saturday's drawing. The game 
may be played in a variety of complicated forms. 
We will only consider a few of the simpler. As 
has been said, five numbers out of numbers 1 to 
90 are drawn. If any of the numbers selected 
by the player appear among the five the amounts 
paid are as follows : if it has been wagered (as it 
were) that one particular number will be among 
the five and it appears, the amount paid is 10J 
times the stake {estratto semplice) ; if that a cer- 
tain number will occupy a definite position in the 
drawing, e.g. that 89 will come out second of the 
five {estratto deter?ninato), the amount paid is 52 J 
times the stake ; if that any two numbers will be 
among the five (ambo), 250 times the stake; if 



A COMPLICATED SYSTEM 337 

that three numbers will be among the five (terno), 
4250 times the stake; if that four numbers (qua- 
terno), 60,000 times the stake. The ambo is the 
favourite game. About 54 per cent, of the play 
is on the ambo, 40 per cent, on the terno, only 
4 per cent, on the quaterno (a very off chance 
indeed), about i\ per cent, on the estratto deter- 
minate, and \ per cent, on the estratto semplice, 
the winnings on the two latter not being suffi- 
ciently tempting. 

The system, however, at once becomes more 
complicated when the above-described straight- 
forward play (giuoco secco) is abandoned. For 
instance, three numbers are selected by the 
player, 23, 47, 69 ; he takes a ticket for three 
lire distributed as follows : one lira on the ambo 
or that two out of the three numbers will be 
among the five, and two lire on the teruo or that 
all three will turn up. He no longer receives 
250 times the stake if he wins the ambo, because 
he is using three numbers instead of two, and his 
chances are three times as great, for there are 
three combinations of two in three numbers. He 
will only be paid 83.33 times his stake. And 
supposing all three numbers to have been drawn, 
he would receive not only 4250 times his stake 
for the terno secco, but also three times the ambo 
for the three combinations of two. In the 
above case where three lire have been staked, 
the winnings would be lire 8500 on the terno, 



338 THE STATE LOTTERY 

and lire 249.99 on tne ambo^ a total of say lire 
8750. 

To take another and still more complicated 
example. A player puts three lire on five 
numbers, say 8, 27, 44, 89, 90, placing one lira on 
ambo, one on terno, and one on quaterno. If two 
numbers come out he receives only one-tenth of 
lire 250, for there are ten combinations of two in 
five numbers. If three numbers come out he only 
receives one-tenth of lire 4250, for there are also 
ten combinations of three in five numbers. If 
four numbers come out he only receives one-fifth 
of lire 60,000, for there are five combinations of 
four in five numbers. Now, supposing four of the 
above numbers to have been drawn, the winnings 
would be as follows : — 

Quaterno = One-fifth of lire 60,000, lire 1 2,000 

4 times the terno of lire 425 for the 
four combinations of 3 in four 
numbers „ 1,700 

times the ambo of lire 25 for the 
six combinations of 2 in four 
numbers . . . „ 150 



Total winnings . lire 13,850 

Theoretically a player may put on as many 
numbers as he likes, but the more numbers he 
plays the less are his winnings, as will be seen 
from the above example. If he were to put a lira 
on 1 2 numbers, his winnings would only be : on 
the ambo lire 3.79, on the terno lire 19.32, on the 



THE RICEVITORI 339 

qtiaterno lire 1 21.21. When we reach thirty 
numbers there is a positive loss on the ambo, and 
the winnings on the terno have dwindled down to 
a solitary soldo on every lira. People seldom go 
beyond twelve numbers, and by far the more 
usual game is to play three, dividing the stakes 
between ambo and terno. 

The Regio Lotto in its relations with the people 
is not worked directly by the State. The Lotto 
offices are farmed out to private individuals known 
as Ricevitori. There are about 1700 Ricevitori 
in the kingdom. The Ricevitore provides his own 
office (Banco di Lotto) and his own staff of clerks, 
and retains a percentage of his takings calculated 
on a sliding-scale which allows him io| per cent, 
if his weekly takings have not exceeded lire 200, 
and 3 J per cent, on takings of lire 5800 and 
upwards. Midway in the scale is 7 per cent, on 
lire 1200. The Ricevit 1 $. is rrovided with 
Register Books of tickets by the Government. 
The tickets are ten in number, of the values of 
12c, 16c, 20c, 30c, 50c, lire 1,2,3,5, 10, and 100. 1 
At the cessation of play, which in most towns takes 
place on Friday night, the Ricevitore has to send 
the counterfoils of the tickets issued to the head 
office of the district {compartimento) in which his 

1 A Ricevitore may not issue a ticket on the same numbers if the 
result in case of winning should exceed lire 400,000. Thus he 
could not issue a 100 lire ticket on quaterno secco. For the win- 
nings would amount to lire 600,000. 



34 o THE STATE LOTTERY 

office is situated. Thus Syracuse would send to 
Palermo, Barletta to Bari, Caserta to Naples, 
Lucca to Florence, &c. If for any reason, say by 
reason of a railway accident or a faulty postal de- 
livery, the counterfoils have not reached the head 
office in time to be deposited in the safes before 
the drawing, all winnings on such tickets are can- 
celled, and the value of the tickets is returned to 
the players. Of course such an event rarely 
occurs, but I have known it happen more than 
once, when rough weather has prevented the Elba 
packet from sailing for the mainland. There is 
much soreness of heart when winning numbers are 
among those thus cancelled, but the only certain 
loser is the Ricevitore, who finds himself minus 
a week's commission on takings. At the eight 
head-centres play is continued in the Lotto offices 
until two o'clock on Saturday afternoon, when the 
counterfoils are surr^ ns r ered- feC the local Director. 
Arrangements have been made in some of the 
larger towns {e.g. Ancona, Bologna, Leghorn) 
for an " Archivio " under the control of the local 
Intendant of Finances. Here counterfoils can be 
deposited as at the head offices, and play con- 
tinued till two in the afternoon of Saturday. 
These extra hours make the greatest possible dif- 
ference to the takings. For instance the Bologna 
Archivio was only started at the beginning of 
the financial year for 1898. In the previous 
year the takings at Bologna were lire 1,711,965, 



AN INGENIOUS PLAN 341 

in 1898 lire 1,914,673, showing a gross increase 
in receipts of over Hre 202,000, caused solely by 
the Lotto offices of the town being open about 
300 hours longer in the course of the year. 

Seeing that the Ricevitore has surrendered his 
counterfoils at a certain hour, it might be thought 
that play would then cease altogether. But such 
is not the case. The Italian imagination is suffi- 
ciently fertile, and it has hit upon a plan of con- 
tinuing play up to the hour of drawing and even 
somewhat beyond it. The Ricevitore, before 
parting with his Registers, takes a number of 
tickets at his own risk, filling them up with 
numbers of his own choice. These he continues 
to sell after the hour that play has officially 
ceased, and such tickets, which are known as 
"storni," enjoy great popularity. It is seldom 
that a Ricevitore has any storni left on his hands 
by the time the news of the drawing reaches a 
city. If he has, the loss is his own ; or the gain, 
should he be fortunate enough to hold any storm 
with winning numbers. I once heard of a Rice- 
vitore who was grumbling that his storni were 
going off very badly that day ; the tickets left 
on his hands brought him in over ^1000 in 
winnings. 

The odds are very heavily against winning in 
the Regio Lotto. There are 4005 combinations 
of 2 in 90 numbers, 117,480 combinations of 3, 
and no less than 2,555,190 combinations of 4, 



342 THE STATE LOTTERY 

and yet with these heavy odds against the player, 
only 250 times the stake is returned for ainbo, 
4250 for the terno, and 60,000 for the quaterno. 
To show how slender are the chances of winning, 
it is sufficient to reflect that it is just as likely 
that Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 should be the five numbers 
drawn, as any other series of five. Yet how 
seldom do we see even three consecutive numbers 
in the same extraction. In the year 1897 there 
were 53 drawings at the eight Ruote, and there- 
fore 424 extractions altogether (8x53), yet in 
all, put together, three consecutive numbers only 
appeared four times. On the other hand, two 
consecutive numbers are of singular frequency, 
no less than 71 cases having occurred in 1897. 
Fortune does indeed play strange freaks with the 
numbers. An analysis which I have made of 
some of the drawings of 1897, shows that at 
Florence the numbers 10, 16, 47, were not drawn 
once, that 14 numbers were drawn only once, 24 
numbers twice, 19 three times, 12 four times, 10 
five times, 8 six times, and not one seven times. 
At Rome in the same period every number had 
its turn, 14 numbers being drawn only once, 21 
twice, 25 three times, 19 four times, 8 five times, 
and 3 six times. It should be borne in mind 
that in 53 drawings only 265 (53 x 5) numbers 
are drawn at each centre, leaving barely three 
turns to each if all the ninety numbers were to 
have a turn. At Naples the number 79 was 



A TABLE OF GAINS 



343 



once 3! years without showing itself. The pre- 
sent writer has, as, a matter of curiosity, looked 
out each week for the numbers 47, 56, 89, for 
the last four years. They have never appeared 
at any of the eight Ruote as a terno, and only 
twice as an ambo. Nay, an Italian acquaintance 
of his declares that he has made a similar experi- 
ment with three numbers for the last thirty years, 
and that no two of them even have turned up 
together in that long period. 

But that people do win, and a great many 
people too, may be seen from the following 
authentic Table, which has the further merit of 
showing the amount played and won upon the 
five different kinds of play : — 



Year \X 





Takings. 


Winnings. 


Profits. 


Estratto Semplice . 
Estratto Determinato . 
Ambo .... 
Terno .... 
Quaterno . 

Total 


Lire. 

250,043 

1,009,400 

37,482,159 

28,439,944 
2,964,665 


Lire. 

128,186 

613,821 
24,133,352 
12,043,187 

468,895 


Lire. 
121,857 

395,579 
13,348,807 

16,396,757 
2,495,771 


70,146,211 


37,387,441 


32,758,771 



The above statistics show that the State cleared 
49 per cent, on the Estratto Semplice, 39 per 
cent, on the Estratto Determinato \ 36 per cent. 
on the Ambo, 58 per cent, on the Terno, and as 
much as 84 per cent, on the Quaterno, which 



344 THE STATE LOTTERY 

so rarely turns up — altogether 47 per cent, of 
the takings. 1 

The Regio Lotto costs the State some ,£235,000 
per annum apart from the winnings. There is 
the commission of the Ricevitori, the salaries 
of the Directors and employes at the head 
offices, the printing of the ticket registers, &c. 
The net result of the year 1899 was as follows :• — 

Lire. 

Takings 70,146,211 

Winnings . . 37,387,441 

Commission of the 

Ricevitori . . 5,456,186 

Salaries . . 562,218 

Printing . . i49>53° 

Various Expenses . I 55 J 7°5 



43,711,080 

Net result to the State for the year 

1899 Lire 26,435,131 

Gambling in the Regio Lotto shows little sign 
of decreasing. 2 In 1861, the first year of the new 

1 The Italian financial year begins on the ist July and ends on 
the 30th June. The above figures refer to the financial year. 

The official estimate of gross profits based on many years' ex- 
perience is : Estratto S 'em ft lice 41.67 per cent., Estratto Determinato 
41.67 per cent, Ambo 37.58 per cent, Terno 63.82 per cent, Qua- 
terno 88.26 per cent, — altogether 54 per cent, on the takings. The 
percentage in 1896 was 52 per cent., in 1897 51 per cent, in 1898 
54 per cent, the average of the five years 1893-1897 being 52 per 
cent, all which shows on how sound a basis the official estimate is 
calculated. 

2 In 1899 the enormous number of 240,473,410 tickets were taken 
in the Lotto, of which 2,260,518 were winning tickets. 



GAMBLING ON THE INCREASE 



345 



United Kingdom, with Venice and the Patrimony 
of St. Peter still unannexed, and the population 
about 21,521,560, the gross takings were only 
28,308,380 lire, showing a contribution of lire 
1.32 per head of the population. In 1899, with 
the population at 30, 90 1, 8 5 2, 1 the takings, as has 
been said, were lire 70, 146,211, or lire 2.27 per head 
of the population. The highest year ever known 
was 1869 when receipts reached a total of lire 
80,791,928. It was also the worst known year 
for the State, the winnings being lire 61,314,438. 
The Statistics of the results of the Lotto are an 
interesting study, and a few of the years since 1861 
have been selected for comparison in the follow- 
ing Table : — 















Takings 


Year. 


Takings. 


Winnings. 


Gross 
Profits. 


Number of 
Tickets. 


Population. 


per head 
of popu- 
lation. 




Lire. 


Lire. 


Lire. 






Lire. 


I 862 


35,249,204 


15,420,200 


19,829,003 


— 


21,495,326 


I.64 


1867 


44,318,866 


23,844,345 


20,474,520 


— 


24,658,7722 


I.80 


1871 


66,521,718 


32,890,697 


33,631,020 


136,783,095 


26,164,494 s 


2-54 


1875 


73=544,715 


37,178,774 


36,365,940 


218,334,010 


26,827,742 


2.74 


1883 


71,831,555 


38,744,301 


33,087,254 


236,406,326 


28,311,081 


2-54 


1889 


75,016,968 


38,399,012 


36,617,956 


233,836,071 


29,835,576 


2.52 


1894 


64,751,437 


29,643,515 


35,107,922 


211,733,878 29,953,611 


2.16 


189S 


64,794,813 


33,576,948 


31,217,865 


223,489,723 29,963,611 


2.16 


1896 


63,9",397 


30,837,573 


33,073,823 


221,389,969 


30,351,578 


2. 11 


1897 


65,753,223 


32,389,549 


33,363,675 


227,528,335 


30,533,86o 


2.15 


1898 


66,117,958 


30,623,671 


35,494,287 


228,343,969 


30,718,069 


2.15 



1 Excluding Sardinia. 

2 Venice was added to the kingdom in 1866. 

3 Rome and the patrimony of St. Peter annexed in 1870. 



346 THE STATE LOTTERY 

As has been indicated, Italy is divided into 
eight districts called compartimenti, for the pur- 
poses of the Lotto. Not that this prevents 
a person living in one compartimento from 
playing on the drawing in another. A Ricevitore 
in any town can issue tickets for any of the 
extractions. Indeed, a favourite game is to in- 
crease the chances eightfold by playing the 
same numbers on all the eight extractions {tutte 
le Ruote). One lira placed on three numbers 
secco on all the eight drawings would fetch, if they 
turned up at one place, lire 531.25, and one lira 
on the ambo secco, lire 31.25. The compartimento 
of Naples is facile princeps in the amount it 
contributes to the State coffers through the 
Lotto, as the following figures show : — 



,, , ,. , Takings in 1808. 
Compartimento. & r ■ 
r Lire. 


Population of 
Compartimento. 


Naples 


18,244,375 


3> 8 54>53° 


Turin 


9,411,145 


4,855,023 


Palermo 


9,106,549 


4,207,330 


Florence 


6,818,836 


3,743,892 


Rome 


6,665,402 


3,407,743 


Milan 


5,545>9°7 


3,767»72i 


Bari . 


5,222,253 


3,190,687 


Venice 


5> io 3>496 


3,69i,i43 



The devotion to the Lotto in the South is 
intense. The strictly meridional compartimenti 
of Bari, Palermo, and Naples contribute nearly 
one-half of the takings from the Lotto, and if the 
quasi-meridional compartimento of Rome be added 



ORDER OF PRECEDENCE 347 

to their number, South is 6,000,000 lire ahead of 
North. Looking at the receipts from the point 
of view of the modern provinces, the province of 
Naples contributes lire 11.09 a head per annum, 
the province of Leghorn is a bad second with 
lire 7.80, and the province of Rome a poor third 
with lire 4.98. Of other important provinces 
Venice is fourth with lire 4.71, Palermo fifth with 
lire 4.39, Genoa sixth with lire 4.17, Florence 
tenth with lire 2.96, Milan twelfth with lire 2.78, 
Turin fourteenth with lire 2.52, Bologna twentieth 
with lire 1.59, Lucca twenty-seventh with lire 1.25, 
Siena thirty-fourth with lire 1.07, Perugia fifty- 
seventh with 65 c, and the little province of Sondrio 
sixty-seventh and last with 19c. Note that Sar- 
dinia (composed of two provinces) possesses no 
Lotto offices. There is no great liking for the 
Lotto in the island ; besides, the distance at which 
it is situated from the mainland would consider- 
ably shorten the time of play, owing to the regu- 
lation requiring all counterfoils to be deposited at 
a head office before the drawing. The Sardinians 
who play do their business by correspondence, 
chiefly with the Ricevitori of Leghorn. A cer- 
tain amount of business with foreign countries 
also seems to be done, and I know of Ricevitori 
who have even English correspondents. 

Who that has lived any length of time in Italy 
can resist play? It is in the atmosphere. The 
stranger seems out of harmony with his surround- 



348 THE STATE LOTTERY 

ings unless he indulges in a little play himself, 
and takes a proper interest in his neighbour's 
play. The present writer is fain to confess that 
after some years of churlish resistance he ended 
by capitulating, and has seldom missed a week 
since the spring of 1896 without putting a trifle 
on the Lotto. During that time he has won 
lire 440 divided among four ambi, and is thought 
to have had exceptional good fortune. The pro- 
cess of choosing three numbers is full of interest 
and excitement, and leads to the retailing of many 
a thrilling anecdote and the recounting of much 
domestic detail. We are none of us so cold- 
blooded as calmly to choose any the first three 
numbers of the ninety that occur to us, nor are 
many of us sufficiently scientific to care a jot 
about the theory of probabilities. No ; we play 
on dreams and events. For every single thing 
of any importance in this world has its number, 
and what that number is may be learned, with a 
variety of other interesting cabalistic matter, from 
one of the many dream-books which enjoy so 
extensive a circulation in the peninsula. " II Vero 
Libro dei Sogni " is a great favourite in Tuscany. 1 

1 IL VERO LIBRO DEI SOGNI ossia L'ECO DELLA 
FORTUNA, nuova edizione composta sul sistema Rutiliano, 
contenente : Sessanta mila Voci poste per ordine alfabetico e 
relative a Persone, Animali, Piante, Frutti, Fiori, Arti, Milizia, 
e Citta. Accresciuta delle vere Tavole Rutiliane, della Chiave 
d'Oro, dei Numeri simpatici, delle Cabale della Sibilla e di altre 
utilissime ai Giocatori. (Florence, A. Salani, 1897, 8vo, pp. 672.) 



THE BOOK OF DREAMS 349 

The lower classes — and especially the servant 
class — play on dreams rather than events. 
The cook dreams that she was chased over a 
bridge by a bear. In the morning she, after 
consultation with many friends in the market- 
place, decides that the three salient features of 
her dream were the bridge, the bear, and her 
own abject terror. The poulterer say, for she 
probably does not read, turns up the Libro de 
Sogni for her, in the presence of an interested 
audience. Bridge is found to be 6, bear 55, and 
her own abject terror 90. Here are three num- 
bers clear enough, but we are only at the beginning 
of the discussion. Bear is 55, but white bear is 1, 
black bear 18, a dancing bear 6, an infuriated 
bear 1 8. The cook thinks the bear of her dream 
was brown, but that he may have had some black 
and some white about him, also that he may have 
been dancing when she came up with him, and 
that he did not seem very infuriated. Excitement 
among the knot of onlookers grows apace. "If 
you play 55 and 18 comes out you will be sorry 
for it, my dear," says the poulterer in warning 
tones. Then bridge pure and simple is 6, but 
iron bridge is 16, wooden bridge is 46, draw- 
bridge is 80, railway-bridge is 7. Drawbridge 
and railway-bridge are dismissed, but as the cook 
thinks the bridge of her dream was built partly 
of iron and partly of wood, with some stonework 
about it, the loud-voiced quarrelling stage is soon 



35o THE STATE LOTTERY 

reached by her excited friends. The only point 
that admits of no dispute is 90 for her own abject 
terror. 

This little example is sufficient to show that 
the due selection of three numbers is no common 
matter, but needs much anxious deliberation. In 
the writer's dream-book there are, besides dog 
pure and simple, thirty-six kinds of dog to dream 
about : mad dogs, biting dogs, spotted dogs, lost 
dogs, and so forth. Besides cat, horse, ass, man, 
woman, pure and simple, there are twenty-eight 
kinds of cat, thirty-nine kinds of horse, sixteen 
kinds of ass, twenty-three kinds of man, and 
(Heaven help us !) one hundred and thirty-seven 
kinds of woman ! So large a part does woman 
play in our dreams in Tuscany ! Pretty well 
every eventuality is provided for, from a dream 
about a woman at her toilet-table, to a dream 
about two women who are scratching each other's 
faces. It is always difficult to remember the 
connotations of a dream figure, and doubly so 
when extreme precision is required of us. The 
only absolutely certain method in the popular 
estimation (ah ! how it is prayed for !) is to dream 
of three numbers, either that some one uttered 
them, or, better still, that they were written up 
on a wall. A policeman in Sicily not long ago 
woke up his wife in the night, telling her he had 
dreamed of four numbers, and asking her to 
help him to remember them in the morning. He 



ROYAL NUMBERS 351 

played his four numbers, and won a sum that 
enabled him to retire from the force. The story 
went the round of the Italian papers lately, and I 
believe it to be true. 

As with dreams so also with events : three 
numbers are not arrived at without much search- 
ing of heart, and still more talk. King Umberto 
and Queen Margherita come to Turin to unveil 
a statue to Victor Emmanuel. There is 79 for 
King, 73 for Queen, 60 for Umberto, 20 for 
Margherita, 23 for Vittorio, 45 for Emanuele, 
1 9 for Torino, 5 5 for statue, 8 for the day of the 
month. Which are the three salient numbers 
here? And what agony if any of the rejected 
numbers should come out, bringing with them 
wealth long dreamt of! 

At Jubilee time in June 1897, English re- 
sidents in Italy affected the Queen's numbers. 
The drawing at Florence for Saturday 19th 
June in that year was 33, 18, 73, 60, 77. One 
Englishman played Victoria (60), Queen (7s) t 
and Empress (41), and won two hundred lire 
on the ambo. It is somewhat of a curious coin- 
cidence that 60 should stand for Victoria and for 
Throne, and should also have been the number 
of years the Queen had been on the Throne. 
Eighteen, the age at which she came to the 
Throne (60) is another Royal number, and 77 
was but one point removed from her age in 
1897. 



352 THE STATE LOTTERY 

It would be easily possible to fill a volume with 
stories about the Regio Lotto : this chapter, 
however, has no other scope than a brief explana- 
tion of its system and working. But two more 
stories — they are so thoroughly Italian, too — and 
I have done. A certain Government official was 
imprisoned and arraigned for an embezzlement of 
10,000 lire of the public funds. Before the Exam- 
ining Magistrate he did not reveal the trump 
card which he thought would secure his acquittal. 
But in open court his advocate triumphantly pro- 
duced 10,000 lire worth of unsuccessful Lotto 
tickets. " See!" he cried, "if my client has taken 
from the State with one hand, he has restored to 
it with the other every centesimo which he is 
accused of having misappropriated ! " The inge- 
nious plea did not, however, avail to save the 
culprit from a term of imprisonment. 

My second story is even better, and will serve 
to show how thoroughly every class of society is 
permeated by the notion of the Lotto. On the 
2nd April 1900, Zanardelli, in an eloquent speech 
in the Chamber of Deputies, quoted with some 
emphasis Articles 3, 6, and 82 of the fundamental 
constitution of the realm. A derisive voice from 
the "Centre" shouted "three good numbers for the 
Lotto ! " and the idea at once caught on. All the 
Deputies played these numbers, and the story 
having got abroad, the populace of Rome followed 
their example. It is said that altogether 40,000 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 353 

lire were played that week on these three numbers. 
Not one of them came out, and the wags of the 
Chamber were saying the next day that the 
Minister of Finance was wanting in manners and 
gratitude for not having sent his card to Zanardelli 
to thank him for this precious addition to the 
Exchequer ! 

Note. — Most of the figures in this chapter have 
been taken from the " Relazione " of the Director- 
General of the Lotto, a very model of an official 
compilation. I have also to express my acknow- 
ledgments to the Cavaliere E. Tempesti, Director 
of the Florence Compartimento, who courteously 
afforded me every facility in seeing the drawing 
of the Lotto and in obtaining information. 



Printed by Ballanttne, Hanson & Co. 
Edinburgh cf London 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

SKETCHES AND STORIES, GRAVE AND GAY 
LONDON : CONSTABLE. 1896. 8vo, 3s. 6d. 

IN ITALIAN 

LA BENEDIZIONE DI SAN FRANCESCO: 
SPIEGAZIONE DEL GEROGLIFICO 

LIVORNO; GIUSTI. 1900. 8vo. 



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